Heather Graham: Fun Is Her Middle Name

In Graham's case, much of that has certainly had to do with her choice of career and the sometimes risque roles she has taken, a path that long ago put her at odds with her conservative upbringing, leading to a much-publicized estrangement from her parents, which Graham prefers not to discuss. "I hate to violate their privacy by talking about them in a magazine article, whatever, a newspaper," she says.

She wasn't always so circumspect. "I know," she says, "I just decided it wasn't that nice." She says she regrets the loose lips exercised in some of her earliest interviews, given at 18 or 19, when she started acting (Graham turned 37, by the way, three days before the day we spoke).

"When you do it when you're a teenager, you're like, 'Blah, blah, blah, my parents. Blah, blah, blah, this,' and 'Blah, blah, blah, that.' And then it becomes a story, and you're like, 'Oh, do I really want to publicize this?' You think, 'No.' "

What Graham wants to publicize at the moment is the message of tolerance and self-acceptance she believes is espoused, but not hammered away at, by her newest role, which she believes everyone -- gay or straight, celebrity or nobody -- can relate to. "It's like, people can judge your life and say, 'Oh, why do you have this difficulty with your parents?' or 'Why did you do this thing that I read about?' You have to reach a place in yourself where you go, 'People are going to says things about me. People are going to write derogatory things about me.' And I mean, who cares? That's hard to get to, that place."

Another place that's hard to get to, according to Graham, is a world without sexual double standards. That's something the actress, in the parts she takes and in her new role as producer, would like to change.

"Where's the funny comedy about being a woman, and sexuality, and what they think, and what they feel, that's more out there than just 'I want to be married' and 'How can I meet the right guy?' It's so ingrained that we're used to, like, 'Oh, there's Will Ferrell, there's Adam Sandler, there's these guys.' Where's the female equivalent? There is none, and that's sad."

So is Graham angling to be the next Sarah Silverman, the pretty and potty-mouthed star of "Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic" and now her own TV show? Does she want to change the world as a power-player producer of feminist films, both serious and silly, that will turn the patriarchy on its head?

"There's a part of me that really wants to do that," Graham says, "and there's a part of me that just wants to be happy. I would like to feel that the system could change, but at the same time I don't want to be miserable in life. I just want to do the things I like. I'd love for that to happen, and in the meanwhile, I just want to" -- wait for it -- "have fun."