Turning Hollywood into her playground

“She’s a free spirit. An elf. A pixie. Ariel from ‘The Tempest.’ ” So says Jerry Leider, producer with Robert Shapiro of “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” which opens Friday. The Disney movie stars Lindsay Lohan, of “Freaky Friday” fame. But Leider’s not referring to the young actress. He’s waxing rhapsodic about director Sara Sugarman. Shapiro chimes in: “She has a great cinematic eye; she’s very inventive. And at times she can make Robin Williams appear comatose.”

Quite a buildup, but a visit with Sugarman bears it out. She has a sprite-like quality and a shock of hair that spikes around her expressive face like so many exclamation points. A charming accent attests to her hometown of Rhyl, Wales. “I’m a Welsh Jewish filmmaker,” she says. “I’m the best and the only one.”

Working on the Disney lot while finishing her film, she picks up a publicist’s memo on how to prepare for an interview. “ ‘Talking points: “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” is an all-out comedy with attitude about what happens when a girl named Lola moves to the ‘burbs of New Jersey with her family from her beloved New York City....

“ ‘I’d always wanted to make a film that was for teenagers,’ it says I said, ‘a movie for every 14-year-old out there who’s had to go to a new school with a zit on her chin and deal with extremely complex high school relationships.’ ”

Did she really say that? “I don’t remember,” Sugarman deadpans. “I might have been drunk.”

When it comes to drama queens, it takes one to direct one. Sugarman -- who is in her late 30s -- is no queenie come lately. At 11, she ran the Sara Sugarman School of Dance and Drama on her lawn. “All the kids in class would come. I’d get my mum’s broomsticks, and they’d tap dance with them.” She even handed out report cards for their parents to sign.

Sugarman then went through an Anna Karenina phase, walking along the seashore in an Astrakhan coat, with a lamb on a leash. Next up were futurist Russian poets. “These guys were like punk rockers in 1910, and I was obsessed with them.” While other kids were into Duran Duran, Sugarman dressed up like a different poet every week.

Sugarman’s father, Paul, owned a shop called Mr. Paul Clothes for the Modern Man. He “had a T-bone mustache and big sideburns. He was like the Tom Jones of my town. I was brought up very glamorously.” She considered herself the daughter of a celebrity, a feeling that still boosts her confidence. “I walk through doors that perhaps other people might think twice about, but it’s really because I’m Mr. Paul’s daughter.”

Mr. Paul’s daughter left home at 14 to pursue an acting career in London. She worked in TV and films for 10 years, then enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. “It was brilliant discipline in the classics, breaking a play down and understanding the actor’s technique. Everything I learned at RADA has enabled me to direct today,” she says.

She started working in the South Wales village of Pontycymer, making short films. That’s where she met Wendy Phillips, the local school’s cleaning lady and a natural comedian. Phillips became Sugarman’s muse and star. “I was John Ford, she was John Wayne; that’s how I look at it.” Phillips didn’t mind filming, as long as she could get to her bingo by 6 p.m.

The short films from Pontycymer earned Sugarman attention on the film festival circuit, and her subsequent feature, “Very Annie Mary” starring Rachel Griffiths, brought her to the attention of Hollywood, where her adventures continue.

While shooting “Drama Queen” in Toronto, Sugarman came across a boy in a parking lot who was singing “Living for the City,” a song she wanted to use in the movie. She made producers listen to him sing on her cellphone and then declared that not only was the song definitely in, but they had to give the kid an audition. “Everybody thought I was mental,” Sugarman laughs, “because they’d just hired this director from Wales who was now employing passersby in parking lots.” The boy landed a role in the chorus.

“I don’t think I’ve had a better time with a director,” costume designer David Robinson says. “She was always fresh and willing to try new ideas. She didn’t ever get caught up with something she had in her mind from a month ago.”

Lohan agrees with the assessment, adding, “She has more energy than me.” Asked what it was like to work with Sugarman, Lohan was hard-pressed to remember. “We never really got down to work,” she says, because “we were always still kidding around.”

Kidding continued off camera. Sugarman recalls one prank that involved Disney executive Brad Epstein. “He planned a Mossad-type operation and got two water guns. Not pistols, but like Kalashnikov rifles, and we went on a top secret mission up to Lindsay’s suite.” Lohan opened the door and got soaked. The director and executive chased their star down the hallway and out the fire exit. Sugarman cheerfully blames the entire episode on Epstein.

Sugarman then turns back to the memo, shredding a list of suggested questions.

“ ‘Tell me about the movie.’ Hmm, go see it.

“ ‘What’s up next for you?’ Welfare.

“ ‘Did you read the book prior to making the film?’ Hello, duh.

“ ‘What actors would you really like to work with?’ ”

She stops a moment to think. George Clooney’s name is mentioned. “Yes, please, I should cocoa!” She then translates, “ ‘I should say so.’ ” She would gladly work with kids again too. “I really had an empathy; maybe I just never grew up,” she says.

Her film is a tween dream, full of fashion, fantasy sequences, singing, dancing, catty girls and cute boys. Disney executives, enthusiastic about its prospects and hoping to replicate the popularity of “Freaky Friday,” moved the opening from April to Friday.

The only problem Sugarman has working in Hollywood is that nobody pronounces her name correctly. (Sara has a soft first a, as in car.) “I’m really having a hard time,” she laments. “I’ve just got to change my name to something completely different, like Constantinople Sugarman.”

Otherwise, she’s become so comfortable with studio life that she plans to stay on the Disney lot. She’s never had her own office before, and she’s not giving up this one. “Michael Eisner, Dick Cook, Nina Jacobson can tell me to leave and it ain’t happening. And if they try to get me out by force, I’ll use my Kalashnikov.”

Don’t mess with the queen.