Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson

“I was soooo nervous,” says Jerry Hall, streaming into Maple Drive restaurant, her stepdaughter Karis Jagger in tow, for the after-party of the L.A. premiere of the play “The Graduate,” in which Hall plays the sad and seductive Mrs. Robinson. “I had that feeling that you can’t really breathe at moments, but I don’t think anyone could tell.”

Yet this is hardly her first performance. The former model and Mrs. Jagger had already put in six months on “The Graduate” in London in 2000, and three more months in the United States before the L.A. opening. “Something about being here makes me nervous,” she says, Mrs. Robinson’s haughty upper-crust accent replaced by Hall’s native Texas twang. “So many actors, maybe.”

Well, not that many. Neve Campbell and Rachel Leigh Cook catch the play at the Wilshire Theatre but don’t make it to the party. And here, all she needs to do is turn around to see all the sympathetic eyes.

Enjoying the buffet of Chinese skirt steak and potatoes au gratin are the cast, of course, as well as the very enthusiastic Sally Kirkland and Rebecca De Mornay, whose father, right-wing TV host Wally George, died three days earlier. “The play was wonderful,” she offers. “The movie is one of my favorites of all time. The juxtaposition of lust versus innocence, even though it was obviously in the movie, was not as clear as in the play. And Jerry did a great job.”

As for lead actor Rider Strong, who plays the Benjamin Braddock role made famous by Dustin Hoffman -- might he have found a discerning critic in Jason Biggs, who is over at the bar, since the “American Pie” star played Braddock on Broadway? No, Biggs can find no fault with the evening’s performance, though for a different reason. “I’m ill-prepared to talk. I apologize,” he says. “I was working and I only just got here.”