Wave of Celebrity Doesn’t Swamp Movie’s Real-Life Heroine

Erin Brockovich is now a Hollywood name, but the morning after the glitzy premiere of her movie she wasn’t sleeping in or drinking celebratory champagne from a crystal flute.

She spent Wednesday morning in the emergency room with her feverish daughter, like any typical parent, even one glorified on movie posters and bus placards.

And in the evening, at a fund-raiser and early screening of “Erin Brockovich,” the film opening Friday that tells her story, she had no entourage and trod no red carpet, just the speckled one at the United Artists Oaks Mall Theater in Thousand Oaks.

She’s still the same Erin Brockovich she was months ago, before Julia Roberts wiggled into the tight skirts and cleavage-revealing tops Brockovich is known for and became a character at once smart, outspoken, tenacious and driven to justice.

You’d guess the real Brockovich would be impossible to fluster. Almost.

At the Tuesday night premiere in Hollywood, “I was literally shaking,” said Brockovich, still an investigator at the law office of Masry & Vititoe in Westlake Village.

“I’ve never, ever seen anything like it: the people, the attention, the cameras,” she said. “One of the photographers said, ‘Come up closer.’ And I said, ‘No, you scare me.’ ”

But she hadn’t been afraid of wearing a body-hugging dress with two cutouts in the midriff, a dress she pulled out of her closet just before the premiere. The stress of celebrity had made her lose weight, and the previously planned dress had to be ditched.

It’s a long way from the dusty streets of the California desert community of Hinkley, where Brockovich did the unglamorous work of legal investigation, door-to-door and through mud and muck, years before the case and the Universal Pictures-Columbia Pictures movie made her rich.

The movie tells the story of how the twice-divorced mother of three with a daring fashion sense and dogged persistence helped win a $333-million lawsuit against PG&E;, accused of poisoning the town’s water.

Even as the movie is unveiled, litigation on the PG&E; case continues in Hinkley.

But because of her new celebrity (including a cameo as a waitress in the film), she can no longer go door to door investigating. And for the moment, she has to play movie star--a role she seemed well suited to Wednesday in a minuscule blue skirt and tight, bright green tank top.

“Everything’s very different right now,” she said. “For a few weeks, this movie is the priority. I’ve been zapped.”

She’s been on “Oprah.” She’s told there have been 300 requests for interviews. On Wednesday, she was late for her “Access Hollywood” interview because her 13-year-old has strep throat.

“I don’t want to get sick of it,” Brockovich said. “It’s a great opportunity to send our message. Everything in the movie is true.”

For both Brockovich and her boss, Ed Masry, the movie is mostly a vehicle for their work. Masry swept into Thousand Oaks three years ago and has become a major figure in environmental issues.

Wednesday night’s benefit raised money for cancer and environmental groups, causes they have been working with for years.

This is not Masry’s first experience with show business. He had a childhood role in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and the 1942 film “Northern Star.” Still, this week’s Hollywood premiere was something, he said.

Reporters “were talking to anybody who would stop to talk. At first, I think they thought I was Tom Cruise,” quipped the white-haired, 67-year-old lawyer.

“I’m the same guy I was last week,” Masry said. “But, now a lot more people are listening.”