Lynda Carter, Just Your Average Superheroine

Lynda Carter at 54 is obviously not the same Lynda Carter of 24, when she first appeared as TV's "Wonder Woman." But sitting here in the living room of her Potomac mansion, she smiles and suddenly we time-warp back to those golden lasso and tiara days of yore.

Although we're not sure that Wonder Woman was ever spotted puffing on a Virginia Slims -- a pack of which Carter just slipped out of her jeans pocket and tucked in a drawer. (A cigarette box nearby, engraved with "Lynda and Robert" and the couple's wedding date, is used for guests, Carter explains.)

Press her on the habit (only one cig, a couple puffs a day, she says) and it's one of those rare times when her warm, upbeat manner takes on a defensive edge, her Maybelline smile fading. So we move on.

And as we talk, there's a surprising conviction, an earnestness to her tone when she compares herself to that famous TV character, as though Wonder Woman is, well, real. Take this moment, for example, when she's explaining how her role in the new superhero movie "Sky High" pays homage to her Wonder Woman past:

"I don't do exploitative Wonder Woman things. I have been careful with her. I like her, and I think she's fantastic for women, and I think she's fantastic for the gay community, and she was great for young guys seeing a beautiful, strong woman."

To understand Wonder Woman, says Carter, is to understand part of herself.

"I don't blend in at all," despite more than two decades as a Washingtonian, she notes. "But I've become kind of oblivious to it. I don't travel with an entourage -- I just do my thing. It's kind of like Wonder Woman. She doesn't think she's all that. It's other people that do."

We realize we need to ask her about a few things -- her presence in two movies currently in theaters, the stressful days when her husband, Robert A. Altman, was embroiled in the BCCI banking scandal, and her struggles with alcoholism -- but at the moment we're drawn to the display cabinet in the next room with the superhero accessories from the 1970s television series. There's that tiara, the two pairs of "bulletproof" bracelets and, yes, the golden lasso.

Carter has the costume, too -- the skimpy star-spangled blue shorts and red bustier emblazoned with a golden eagle that accentuated her cleavage. But displaying the costume, she says, would just be a bit too much.

"Maybe when I'm really old," she says. "In another five years."

Carter clearly has a few good years left in her, and a self-deprecating tone marks many of her reflections. She is "kind of shocked" at the level of interest in her since last month's release of "Sky High" and yesterday's opening of "The Dukes of Hazzard," which was directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, who also worked with Carter in the 2001 comedy "Super Troopers."

She recently landed appearances on "Law & Order: SVU" and "Law & Order" as a character whose story line crosses between the two series. She goes to New York next week to shoot the latter, in which she plays the mother of a con artist. And "20/20" promoted its interview last week with her as one in which she would reveal her secret (alcoholism), something that she had actually done on Larry King's show in 2002.