Playboy Interview: Cindy Crawford

Maybe you've heard this one:

''Cindy Crawford and a guy were stranded on a deserted island. After several weeks, nature took its course and the two began to make love. Months later they were still marooned and they were still baking love.

''One day, Cindy asked her companion if there was anything special she could do for him. 'Well, yes, as a matter of fact,' he said. 'Would you mind putting on my trousers and my shirt?'

''No. That's OK, I guess,' she said, stepping into his pants.

'''And my jacket and tie?'

'''Well, all right,' she agreed.

''And could you pull your hair up under this baseball cap?'

'''Sure,' she replied, getting into the spirit of things.

'''OK, do you feel like a guy now?' he asked.

''Yeah.'

'''A regular guy?'

'''Yeah, yeah. Now what can I do for you?' she asked impatiently.

''He tapped her shoulder, leaned toward her and whispered, 'Just between you and me, dude, I'm fucking Cindy Crawford!'''

''I think it's funny,'' the real Cindy Crawford said when we told her the joke. Of course, she'd heard it before. ''Even my dad liked it. He never quite believes that I'm famous except when someone uses my name without adding 'model' to it. To him, being in a joke means you're really famous because people are expected to know who you are.''

The real joke would be on anyone who doesn't know the name Cindy Crawford. Only a few years ago, even a successful model labored in anonymity. Today--thanks in part to Crawford's success--models are media darlings, offering a new category of celebrity to a glamour-staved public. They sell out the annual ''Sports Illustrated'' swimsuit edition and video. When Naomi Campbell, Elle Macpherson and Claudia Schiffer opened the Fashion Café in New York, it was news that equaled the opening of a Planet Hollywood. And of course there's the Victoria's Secret lingerie catalog (home to Jill Goodacre, Stephanie Seymour and Frederique, among others) and movies such as ''Ready to Wear,'' Robert Altman's dissection of the fashion world. Vendela has appeared as a guest correspondent on ''Entertainment Tonight.'' And Michael Gross' ''Model,'' unveiling of the entire business. was a best-seller.

Crawford is hardly the only successful pretty face. Schiffer, Macpherson, Campbell, Seymour and Christy Turlington are also approaching brand-name status. Rene Russo, Andie MacDowell, Lauren Hutton and Isabella Rossellini have all made lucrative transitions into acting. But has taken modeling to the heights that Crawford has. She's gone from being a magazine cover image to being a cover subject.

How did Crawford catapult above the rest of the pack? Is it an ineffable quality that strikes a chord with the public? Yes, says her MTV ''House of Style'' producer, Alisa Bellletini: ''People find her very real.'' Or as one writer put it, ''She connects.''

There is also Crawford's much-lauded professionalism. In an industry dominated by egos and eccentricity, she has always behaved as the consummate pro--on time, upbeat and conscientious.

Another factor in her success is her will ingness to take risks. After an abortive session with ''Sports Illustrated'' for a swimsuit issue, she created a swimsuit calendar of her own that was a best-seller for four years. In July 1988, she broke a barrier when she became the first of the modern supermodels to pose for Playboy. Those sexy photos, shot by Herb Ritts, led directly to MTV, which was looking for a model to host ''House of Style,'' one whom men both knew and liked. That same year she signed a deal with Revlon that currently runs through her 30th birthday.

Crawford and the distinctive beauty mark above the left corner of her mouth are so ubiquitous that ''Vanity Fair'' has called her ''Cindy, Inc.'' Her 1994 earnings were recently reported to be $6.5 million. She has appeared on more than 300 magazine covers. Her two exercise videos have sold well. Her languorous body--in and partly out of skimpy bathing suits--decorates a series of best-selling calendars. (She donated the proceeds in the name of her brother Jeff, who died when he was three of leukemia-related heart failure, to charities that aid children with leukemia and their parents.) Crawford is a spokesperson for Pepsi, Blockbuster Entertainment and Kay Jewelers. In keeping with the computer revolution, Crawford is a big roadside attraction on the information superhighway. There are many World Wide Web home pages dedicated to her. Her next move is one that she has long postponed: acting. She is co-starring with Billy Baldwin in her first movie, an action thriller called ''Fair Game.''

There have been down times, too. After a four-year semisecret courtship, Crawford and Richard Gere were married in December 1991 in Las Vegas. Although the marriage has always been as unconventional as the tinfoil wedding rings Crawford made for the quickie ceremony, everything seemed to be going fine until the rumors started: They were having problems, Gere was gay, Crawford was bisexual and their pairing was a convenient beard for both. Add to that Crawford's ''Vanity Fair'' cover (she's in a bathing suit) shaving lesbian chanteuse k.d. lang (dressed as a man). In May 1994, when a French magazine reported that Crawford and Gere were separating, the couple took the unusual tack of placing an ad in the ''Times'' of London that affirmed their monogamy and, just for good measure, their heterosexuality. But in December the pair announced that they had been separated since the previous July. They maintain that there are still no definite plans for divorce.

Crawford was born in De Kalb, Illinois in 1966, the middle of three sisters, in a bluecollar family. Her brother died when she was ten and her parents divorced a few years later. She excelled in school--even becoming her high school's valedictorian--while assuming more familial responsibility than the average teenager.

She began modeling at 16 after a photographer asked if he could take her picture for the local paper. Soon Crawford left her summer job--shucking corn--to model, making more than enough money to pay back the $500 her parents had lent her to put together a portfolio. According to one source, Crawford earned up to $1000 a day with the Chicago office of the Elite modeling agency during the summer between her junior and senior years.

Crawford went to Northwestern University on a chemical engineering scholarship but quit after one semester to pursue modeling. She moved to Chicago and spent a couple of years apprenticing with the city's top photographer, Victor Skrebneski. They split when she took a job in New York against his wishes. She made the final move to Manhattan in 1986.

To get a look at Crawford as she makes the transition from model to actress, we dispatched Contributing EditorDavid Rensin(who interviewed Crawford for ''20 Questions'' in April 1993) to the set of ''Fair Game'' in Miami. Says Rensin, ''We met first at the home Cindy had leased while on location. She answered the door wearing cutoff jeans and a black leotard. She looked like the kind of girl-next-door a guy could only dream of.

''The next day I watched her work on the set. Cindy spent most of her time in the backseat of a car being chased through a hotel parking garage. Later, she and her co-star, Billy Baldwin, posed for a movie poster.

''This time, a different Cindy emerged. She wore a torn slip that showed lots of leg between the hem and her high heels. Her face was smudged with dirt and her hair blew freely in the late afternoon wind. Cindy wrapped herself seductively around Baldwin and locked her eyes on the camera. The camera blinked first.

''The most impressive thing about Cindy, beyond the obvious physical attributes, is that she knows who she is. She sees clearly the line between 'Cindy' the girl-next-door and 'Cindy' the product. She is also keenly aware of her effect on people and goes out of her way to include them in conversation, put them at ease and numb the intimidation. Believe me, it works.''

Playboy: When did you realize you were good-looking?

Crawford: I guess when I was in high school. A photographer from the local paper wanted to take pictures of me. I didn't really know what that meant.

Playboy: Oh, come on. You must have been a head-turner even then.

Crawford: Homecoming-queen cute is more like it. I certainly wasn't the most popular girl in school or the one who got any boyfriend she wanted. That was Lisa and Laura, the twins. Any guy they wanted would break up with his girlfriend and go out with them in a minute. I remember there was a movie being shot in our town. I used hot curlers in my hair and put on tiny shorts and I rode my bike over, hoping to be seen. I was in eighth grade but probably looked about 17. I talked with all the guys--though I didn't get farther than the grip truck. My dad always said, ''Of all my daughters, I didn't think you would be a model.''

Playboy: Why not?

Crawford; I'm not sure. Maybe because I was never dying to be a model. It just happened. All I know is that I always wanted to do something bigger than De Kalb, Illinois.

Playboy; Like what?

Crawford: Nuclear physicist. First female president.

Playboy: As valedictorian of your high school class, you were entitled to those dreams. Didn't you bet your dad $200 you'd get straight A's through junior high and high school--and win?

Crawford: True. But I've milked that story enough. A couple years ago there was a newspaper story about some fourth graders who were asked who they wanted as president. I came in second to Bush. That was a surprise. But what was more interesting is that they voted for me because they said I was smart, not because I was pretty. I thought that was cool.

Playboy: But you've become famous primarily for your looks. How does that make you feel?

Crawford: It's strange why I'm famous, don't you think?

Playboy: Not if you consider how our culture works. It values beauty.

Crawford; And that's not necessarily something about our culture that I respect. I don't disrespect myself for succeeding that way. I don't think commercial is a bad word. I understand doing things for pop culture. My look was right for the Eighties. I was smart enough to seize the opportunity and create others.

Playboy: Does being called a model bother you?

Crawford: It's not insulting. That's what I've done for the past ten years. I just hate saying, ''I'm a model.'' I like saying, ''I model'' or ''I act,'' but not that ''I'm an actress'' or ''I'm a model.'' I hate that your career has to define you in a limiting way.

Playboy: Tell us how you would define yourself.

Crawford: I'm ''Cindy Crawford'' when I'm working or going to a movie opening or a Revlon event. I can make a statement with the way I look. I'm like a cartoon character sometimes. The rest of the time I am just a girl. I can go out without pressuring myself to outdress everyone or be the best-looking person around. About five years ago I felt more pressure to be stylish because I thought the way I looked in public reflected on me professionally. Now I realize that it doesn't. Today I can go out with wet, stringy hair and only a little makeup.

Playboy: Clearly, that's enough. A Rolling Stone writer once claimed that you ''may well be the purest embodiment of human perfection in our evolutionary continuum.''

Crawford: I said I was fast food in that article.

Playboy: You did. Why?

Crawford: Because a lot of my fame comes from disposable pop culture. Literally disposable. You throw magazines away after a week or a month.

Playboy: Yet, between hosting MTV's House of Style, your ads for Pepsi, Revlon, Blockbuster and more, you managed to earn a reported $6.5 million last year. Not bad for fast food.

Crawford: Each year I've thought, This is going to be my biggest money year and I don't think I can top it, so I'll just be happy. But I just saw my tax return and thought, Wow! That's pretty cool. Each year I have surpassed the previous year. Sometimes it amuses me that somebody is willing to pay me this much money just basically to be alive today. And I have to do something with my day, so, OK, I'll go put on some makeup and look nice.

Playboy: Do you ever think of yourself as a multimillionaire?

Crawford: Almost never. Growing up, my idea of a millionaire came from The Beverly Hillbillies. We certainly didn't have any millionaires in my hometown. Now, to Cindy Crawford at 29, The Beverly Hillbillies represents what I call ''fuck you'' money--enough to say fuck you to anybody.

Playboy: Which would be how much?

Crawford: To live the kind of modest life that I like? Oh, maybe $50 million in principal, so I can live off the interest. [Laughs] Richard and I used to talk about this all the time. We figured we would still work but could do projects we wanted to do and dictate how we wanted them done. I wouldn't just cruise the Riviera.

Playboy: Speaking of Richard, you two have gone through a very public separation. How hard has it been?

Crawford: One thing I resented was being famous. If we had been a normal couple who wanted to separate for a little while and just get our shit together, we could have done it without having to go public.

Playboy: You might have told only your friends.

Crawford: Right. It's just that we consider the world our friends, so we had to make an announcement. We had lunch and decided.

Playboy: But by the time you announced the separation you had already been apart for a while.

Crawford: Yeah. Richard went to England to do a movie. We were already living separately, but we didn't announce anything because he was on location. Besides, what is an actual separation? We lived half of our married life separated. If separated means not being together, then we already were. But there wasn't a formal separation day. Now we have papers, but at the time we figured we didn't owe it to anyone to tell.

Playboy: What made you finally break the news?

Crawford: The papers started in on us again. We realized it would be more harmful if, when he dated another woman, it looked like he was running around on me--when he wasn't because we were separated.

Playboy: Like the story in the papers about Richard and an actress?

Crawford: Model. [Smiles] Young model!

Playboy: A few months before the separation you and Richard bought an ad in the Times of London, declaring not only your monogamy and love for each other but also your heterosexuality. Since you included the public then, was it just natural to do so later?

Crawford: No. You just feel really helpless when all this shit is flying around you, and it's about you, and you can't do anything about it. The ad was our attempt to say, ''Here's our truth right now.'' We had wanted to say something in the ad like: ''We have problems like every other couple.'' But our publicist said, ''Listen, you guys are getting way too personal here. You can't say that.'' I still wanted to, because everyone does have problems. But she said to stick to the facts: ''We're heterosexual, we're this, we're that.''

Playboy: Still, that ad was most unusual, wouldn't you say?

Crawford; Totally unusual. But this really nasty article in a French magazine claimed that we were gay, our marriage was a sham, I was a beard for Richard and more. Stupid stuff. At first we thought, OK, this will go away. And then it didn't. It escalated. It got picked up by the English tabloids, which are such lovely things, and then it got picked up everywhere. And we Wondered, What can we do? [Pauses] Our reason for the ad was that we resented the implication that we were living a false life. We were definitely married. We were a couple. What bothered us the most was the idea that we didn't really love each other and that we weren't really a couple who were married in the traditional sense of the word. And by saying that we weren't, they implied that we were being dishonest. And we just wanted to say, 'We're not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. We're married and we're trying the best we can, just like everyone else is.''

Playboy; In retrospect, do you think that ad was a mistake?

Crawford; No. You get to a point where you feel completely helpless. We could not just let the press say whatever they wanted. We wanted to have a voice as well.

Playboy: Where did the rumors start and why do they persist?

Crawford: I have no idea. Maybe because Richard did Bent, a play in which he portrayed a homosexual. But that said, I totally respect Richard's choice not to say, ''I'm not gay1'' I'm not gay!'' I've always thought that was really cool about Richard. His attitude is that there is nothing wrong with being gay, so even by saying, ''Well, I'm not, but there's nothing wrong with it,'' he'd still be separating himself from it. He didn't want to do that.

Playboy: Would it surprise you if I said that many people who knew we would be interviewing you wanted us to ask only one question--and it wasn't a question about your divorce?

Crawford: ''Is she gay?''

Playboy: Right.

Crawford: [Shocked] My God! [Blushes] What can I do? I haven't done anything wrong.

Playboy: We're not suggesting that. But maybe the Vanity Fair cover gave some people the wrong impression.

Crawford: The Vanity Fair cover was not a Cindy Crawford cover. It was a k.d. lang cover. My friend Herb Ritts shot it and thought it was a funny concept. If it had been Arnold Schwarzenegger sitting in that chair and not k.d. lang, no one would have said I was having an affair with Arnold.

Playboy: Sure they would have.

Crawford: OK, they might have. But it wouldn't have been this huge.

Playboy: Didn't you anticipate the problem before agreeing to the shoot?

Crawford: No. It was a funny idea. k.d. is out. I think it's cool that she was playing into a male fantasy as a woman. And Herb takes great pictures of me, so I knew I was going to look good. It wasn't supposed to be a cover, but Vanity Fair got their hands on the photo and it was to good to be true. They put it on the cover so they could sell more copies--which was fine. I knew what I was doing. I wasn't a little girl who got talked into something. I just had no idea that people would think a setup photograph represented some kind of truth. I thought it would say much more about my sense of humor than about my sexuality. But not everyone got the joke. I was a prop. I was the blowup doll in that picture. Unfortunately, it fed the rumor mill. [Pauses] But I would do it again just to fuck 'em. I'm not going to let a fear of what people might say stop me from doing the things I want to do.

Playboy: Didn't Kay Jewelers do public-opinion polls to see if the cover had harmed your image?

Crawford: They were really cool about it. I don't think they had anticipated the hoopla, and they were concerned about what people in the Midwest thought.

Playboy: What did Kay discover?

Crawford: [Smiles] That not many people in the Midwest look at Vanity Fair. And those who do understand that it was a photograph.

Playboy: Even if Richard won't, would you care to go on the record in this country about your sexuality?

Crawford: I will go on the record and say that I have sexual relationships with men only. Why do people think every famous person is gay?

Playboy: What do you think?

Crawford: I think it's a way of cutting you down. It's sad and it has to change. That's why Richard has resisted answering that question for so long. The day that attitude changes is probably the day Richard will go on the record. This topic shouldn't even be this much of the interview--though I understand why it is--and that's part of the problem. I work with beautiful women all the time. If noticing that Christy Turlington is beautiful made me doubt my own sexuality, I would be in trouble. But I can look at Christy and say, ''My God, she is beautiful. She has a beautiful body, beautiful face. But I still want my husband.'' You know what I mean? I don't feel as if looking makes me some kind of weirdo. But I think guys get more freaked out by that. If they notice a very attractive man, and they notice that they're noticing that he's attractive, they're like [clenching her teeth], ''But I'm straight. But I'm straight. But I'm straight.''

Playboy; Perhaps these rumors will stop now that you've set the record straight.

Crawford: I doubt it. Even if I say, ''No, I'm not gay'' a hundred times, I'll still be asked about this for the rest of my life.

Playboy: Let's move on. In his recent book Model, Michael Gross describes modeling as the ''ugly business of beautiful women.'' How ugly is it?

Crawford: I believe there is an ugly side, like there is to almost every business. Ugly behavior makes everyone ugly. I've seen tantrums and girls being sleazy, but modeling is about so much more than who's on drugs and how much we get paid, the stuff sensational news stories are made of.

Playboy: What about your experiences? Have photographers hit on you?

Crawford: I've never had a slimy photographer hit on me. A lot of what you get is what you put out. Maybe people saw potential in me and didn't want to screw up their relationship with me, so they treated me in a good way. But anyone who says they're going to put you on the cover of a magazine if you do something sexual with them is someone you want to avoid.

Playboy: Are younger models more easily talked out of their clothes?

Crawford: Sometimes you let people talk you into stuff. It doesn't feel right, but you say, ''God, I'm a kid, what do I know?'' The first nude picture I did was pretty much gratuitous. I was 18, in Paris and it was for Elle magazine. It was this weird kind of nudity and I wasn't ready for it.

Playboy: What do you mean, weird kind of nudity?

Crawford: Weird in the sense that the session wasn't about being nude. So many photographers--it's such a cliché, but it's true--try to get you to be nude, and it's so stupid. Half the time those pictures aren't going to run in the magazine anyway. On the other hand, to most photographers, even the ones who aren't straight, women's nude bodies are beautiful. Herb Ritts, who isn't into the sexual aspect of it but is interested in the lines and the geometry, wants you to take off your clothes. And because you're normally at a shoot with five people you know and have been joking around with all day, it's not that big of a deal. Then sometimes the pictures come out and you think, Why did I do that?

Playboy: What about other men you deal with, such as the ones who hire you to do ad campaigns? Do they try anything?

Crawford: That never happens. People don't even flirt with me. In fact, there was this big guy at Pepsi--he'd probably kill me for telling this story, so I won't mention his name--who was at this international meeting in Barbados, and I flew down to make an appearance. They rented a house for me for four days before I had to work and I went with a girlfriend and her boyfriend and my agent. One day my girlfriend, her boyfriend and I were sunbathing topless because that's Barbados--you can wear nothing if you want. And the Pepsi guy walks up with my agent to meet us for lunch. I saw him coming and I wondered, Should I put on my top because I have a business relationship with him? I didn't want him to get offended because the rest of the beach had seen me with my top off. Meanwhile, as he's walking toward me, he's saying to my agent, ''I hope she puts on her top.'' He wasn't even being a schmuck, like wanting to see. He wanted to keep our relationship professional.

Playboy: Did you or didn't you?

Crawford: I left it off and it was fine with everyone.

Playboy: The conventional wisdom is that many models live only in the glamorous moment, spend all their money and end up with nothing.

Crawford: Many more have gotten married when they finished their careers, bought the country home, had kids, driven the Volvo station wagon. Unfortunately, our careers are only about ten years long.

Playboy: You've gone the distance. Your ten years are up. Have you peaked?

Crawford: It depends how you judge. I was never the darling of the fashion industry. Not the one, like Kate Moss, who epitomized modeling for six months. Or Linda Evangelista. I was always on covers because I could sell. I always knew that was the reason. I knew it wasn't about me schmoozing or not schmoozing people. I didn't get or not get covers because people were being nice to me or trying to punish me. I might not have been the darling of the runway, but I was doing House of Style. I wasn't a Sports Illustrated regular, but I did exercise videos and worked for Revlon. I kept moving and mushrooming. I never just depended on, say, Anna Wintour at Vogue saying, ''In or out.'' I never let myself wind up on the outside because I kept doing other things.

Playboy: Why do you sell?

Crawford: People think I'm trustworthy, so products I represent have credibility. They find me approachable just from my pictures. Now, people will buy a magazine because they're my fans. In the past they bought because they liked my look.

Playboy: Let's talk about your competition. What do you think of Naomi Campbell?

Crawford: She's like a wild child. You love her, but sometimes you want to say, ''Naomi, behave.'' And she's a great model because she used to dance and she can move like crazy.

Playboy: Claudia Schiffer?

Crawford: Claudia is a star and she understands that. It's pretty obvious that she looks like Bardot. She's really smart about the way she does business. She brings an old-style glamour to modeling.

Playboy: Jill Goodacre.

Crawford: Jill has kind of dropped out. We used to do a lot of swimsuit catalogs together, and I always thought she was fun. Now she's with Harry Connick Jr. and she always looks happy when I see her on Entertainment Tonight.

Playboy: She was the first of the big Victoria's Secret catalog models.

Crawford: She put that company on the map and I bet you any amount of money that she wasn't getting a piece of the profits. She got just a flat rate. That's why, no matter what models get paid, it's not too high. Whatever she got paid was probably not in relation to Victoria's Secret's sales figures.

Playboy: One model whose life turned to tragedy was Gia Carangi, who died of AIDS in 1986. When you began modeling you were called Baby Gia. Did you know who she was?

Crawford: The only models I really knew of before moving to New York were Phoebe Cates and Paulina Porizkova. But I heard of Gia within a week of arriving in New York. My agent would call people and say, ''We've got Baby Gia here. But she's straight, she's not on drugs and she has a mole.'' My agents took me to all the photographers who liked Gia; Albert Watson, Francesco Scavullo, Bill King. Everyone loved her look so much that they gladly saw me.

Playboy; Did you ever meet Gia or want to make contact?

Crawford: No. She hadn't died yet, but she was on her way. She wasn't modeling. I never felt as if we were connected souls or anything like that. I've heard some pretty crazy stories about her and Janice Dickinson in the days when the modeling industry was actually the way people think it is now.

Playboy: Which is?

Crawford: That the girls are doing drugs and partying. I've never been around it so I always say, ''No, that's not true,'' when asked. But lately, I've heard that a little bit of that is resurfacing. Which kind of makes sense.

Playboy: Why?

Crawford: Doing drugs doesn't make sense. What I mean is that the girls, the ones a few years younger than me, don't remember the older models who ended up at 30 with nothing because of drugs. Those things are cyclical.

Playboy: Isn't anybody telling them?

Crawford: I know many makeup artists and photographers who have seen the cycle three or four times now. They try to say something. But some people have to learn the hard way. Lately, we're hearing about people using heroin again. You want to say, ''God. Are you guys stupid?'' Memories are so short.

Playboy:Model makes much of Eileen Ford as a stabilizing influence in the business. What's your impression?

Crawford: I don't know her, though I respect her agency a lot. Eileen seems to be a good substitute mommy. Her agency, on the whole, takes good care of the young models.

Playboy: Did she ever try to steal you away from Elite?

Crawford: No one ever tried. Christy Turlington and I used to talk about raids and deals. We made sure that if I structured a new deal with Elite I'd tell Christy about it so she could go to Ford and get the same thing. And she would tell me the way Ford did deals with her. At one time she was the biggest model at Ford, so she had more leverage to negotiate than I did at Elite, which also had Paulina and Linda and five other big models. It's not like we're all backstabbing; we're trying to help one another get the most out of this that we can.

Playboy: So other supermodels aren't jealous of your success?

Crawford: Elle Macpherson and I are friendly. A year ago, we got together a couple of times for lunch. We felt we were two--and there are more--of the models who were really capitalizing on our successes. So we brainstormed for each other. I always have ideas. When Naomi Campbell was doing her album, I said, ''Naomi, do the album. Disappear for six months. Do not model. If you're going to do an album, do it great and make it so people take you seriously.'' The money is really hard to say no to, so that wasn't the choice she made. So that's fine. I give suggestions. It's just that sometimes they're not taken.

Playboy: Why didn't you invest in the Fashion Café along with Elle, Naomi and Claudia?

Crawford: I was asked. I don't think they put in their own money, anyway.

Playboy: Wasn't it touted as their money?

Crawford: I don't think the models got the capital together. I would be shocked, because I had talked to people about doing it myself. It's like Planet Hollywood, which I'm involved with. Arnold and Sly didn't sit around and say, ''Let's do a restaurant!'' Robert Earl had the idea, and then he recruited the right people. Planet Hollywood openings are covered everywhere.

Playboy: Why did you become involved with Planet Hollywood and not the Fashion Café?

Crawford: There are a couple of reasons. One, Planet Hollywood is already established and successful. I like to align myself with success. I also thought that if I'm going to do movies, I'd rather be in a group of people with Schwarzenegger and Demi Moore than with models again. Vanity Fair did a supermodel cover recently. Jesus, hasn't this story been done? They wanted me to be on the cover with five other models, and I didn't want to. The Fashion Café thing was like that for me.

Playboy: You've had other business opportunities. Mattel wanted to do a Cindy Crawford Barbie doll. Why did you turn them down?

Crawford: I said it would have to have my body dimensions, not Barbie's. No one looks like Barbie. Not even Naomi Campbell. Mattel said they'd done a ''Real Me'' Barbie, and little girls didn't want it. They wanted the one with the arched feet and tiny waist and gravity-defying breasts.

Playboy: Do models understand the power of appearance so well that beauty becomes, as Andy Warhol said, a form of intelligence?

Crawford: If you look beautiful and confident, people treat you like you're beautiful and confident--so you can act beautiful and confident. [Pauses] It's really hard to be objective about yourself, particularly when you're doing a runway show with 40 other girls, each one more beautiful than the next. Then you start looking harder for your flaws and they become more apparent. At home I don't focus on it that much. Even at my class reunion I didn't feel like the best-looking person there.

Playboy: Seriously?

Crawford: I looked cute. I had on the right dress. I didn't go overboard with the hair and the makeup.

Playboy; When are you at your sexiest?

Crawford; The people I would want to find me sexy should consider this--me sitting here during this interview, being real and talking--sexy. The only time I do that Jessica Rabbit thing is at work, for fun or to fuck with people's minds. They know it's a joke. I don't like to be intentionally sexy because it's weird. I've seen women try hard to be sexy and it gives me the creeps.

Playboy: You epitomize sex appeal to a generation, yet your allure has also been described as Disney-like.

Crawford: Clean. This reminds me of a woman who came up to me on an airplane and said, ''You know, my son is just learning about his sexuality.'' He was 12 and just starting to like girls. ''He has pictures of you on his walls. And I'm glad it's you and not Madonna.''

Playboy: What do you think she meant?

Crawford: I'm the sexy girl you'd want to marry. It's funny because I could never be all that people think I am.

Playboy: How do you view Madonna?

Crawford: I totally respect her. The way she has created Madonna is amazing. And I like her music. That might not be the coolest thing to say, but every album, you listen to it a few times and you're hooked. I just saw her at Versace's--he had a dinner party the other night. It was the first time that we were at a small dinner together, and it was nice.

Playboy: You once said you were too intimidated by Madonna to interview her on House of Style.

Crawford: Yeah. In the past. But at this dinner party we didn't have to be ''on.'' Sometimes I think I'm under pressure, but she's under more pressure to keep topping herself. That must be scary sometimes, but she's got balls. How can I not respect that?

Playboy: What's it like knowing that men--and women--watch you all the time? Do you sense their eyes as you walk down the street?

Crawford: No, and if I did I don't think I could act normal. I have to get what I want out of an exchange with a person. If what I want is for them to be nice, that's what I sift for. If they want to sleep with me but I don't want to sleep with them, I can still take the nice part.

Playboy: And if you want more, do you push for it?

Crawford: I'm out of the loop on that lately. [Laughs] But yeah, I guess. I'm not a big flirt. So people aren't quick to do that to me.

Playboy: Is that some sort of form of self-protection?

Crawford: I just don't like to play with fire. I don't want to lead somebody on for the fun of it. I see how easy it is to slip into that behavior. Then, if it never goes anywhere, it stalls by definition. It's hard to have a normal friendship.

Playboy: Describe your strangest dating experience.

Crawford: Before Richard, I went out with a guy who didn't know who I was.

Playboy: You're kidding, right?

Crawford: No, this is true. It was seven years ago. I was on covers of magazines, but he wasn't the type of person who would know that, so he didn't know until after we went out.

Playboy: How did you meet?

Crawford: I was at an airport, waiting for my luggage. This guy saw me and came over and asked me if I needed help. He asked if we could have dinner sometime. And I was crazy and young enough to tell him where I was staying. He came by the hotel the next day and dropped off flowers. I was standing there with a client and the client thought the guy was a delivery boy. The client grabbed the flowers and said, ''I'll take these for her.'' Then he tipped him and sent him away. Fortunately, I had his number, so I called him and said, ''I'm going back to New York tonight on the red-eye, but I have time for dinner beforehand.'' We went out for dinner and he dropped me off at the airport. Later, he told me that the next night he'd said to his roommate, ''I met this really nice girl named Cindy Crawford,'' and his friend said, ''Shut up.'' He said, ''No. That's her name.'' So the friend took him to a 7-Eleven and showed him my pictures on Vogue and Cosmo. Then he said, ''Is this the girl you had dinner with last night?'' And the guy said, ''Yeah, yeah. That's her.

Playboy: Did you continue to see him?

Crawford: For six months. [Laughs]

Playboy: Camille Paglia is positively enamored of you. She has called you ''misty and charismatic.'' She has also said that you have ''a wonderful, dusky, multicultural quality.''

Crawford: Camille called me an Indian princess, too. At least she talks about me.

Playboy: What was your impression when you met her?

Crawford: I like that she challenges the way people think. We spoke together on a panel at a women's festival at Princeton. We met beforehand and Camille was talking about a new girlfriend and she would not shut up. Most of what she says is interesting, but it's like, ''Enough already.'' Finally she said something about the perfect woman for her, and as I was walking out, I said, ''Oh, that must be a deaf-mute.'' She thought it was funny. I disagree with about half of what she says, but I like that she has a sense of humor about herself.

Playboy: Do you agree with Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, that women are tyrannized by today's beauty standards, many of which are popularized by the magazines you appear in?

Crawford: Naomi will say, on a talk show, that you shouldn't have to be beautiful to be a woman with power. Meanwhile, she's got the perfect hair, the perfect everything. I think that Camille balances her message.

Playboy: But is Wolf right? Do fashion magazines send the wrong messages, particularly to young girls?

Crawford: Little girls play dress-up because it makes them feel good and it's fun. Grown-up women should have as much fun. To wear a low-cut dress and be a vamp for one night is great.

Playboy: Are models dumb?

Crawford: [Laughs] That's much too complicated.

Playboy: Are they smart?

Crawford: You don't have to be well read to be a model, but models actually read a lot while waiting for hair, makeup, airplanes. I consider myself somewhat intelligent. The book I'm reading now is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It's not Nietzsche, of course, but it is well written. You don't have to be smart to model--only to turn it into a real success.

Playboy: Are you smart?

Crawford: I used to be. [Laughs] I've been called fiercely intelligent. I think I have a propensity for learning. I know how to watch and pay attention. Is that what makes you smart?

Playboy: Have people treated you as if you were stupid because you are beautiful?

Crawford: The first time was when I showed up for a chemistry class at Northwestern--I was there on a chemical engineering scholarship--and the professor said, ''You're in the wrong class, honey.'' I said, ''I don't think so.'' Another time I missed a calculus midterm because I was on a modeling job. I took it the next day in the professor's office. I didn't miss any answers. I'd had calculus in high school so it was easy. But he made me take it again because he thought that I'd gotten the answers from somebody. He even made a different test for me. I aced that one, too. I've had to fight a little harder.

Playboy: What about the waif trend in modeling? Is it dangerous?

Crawford: I don't like it when fashion magazines get too caught up in one craze and every model is under 100 pounds. That's unrealistic. It becomes a pressure and it's stressful; readers resent the models. On the other hand, some people think models cause bulimia. I certainly don't. I have that hourglass figure. But Kate Moss is just skinny. She eats hamburgers and chocolate and smokes cigarettes and drinks coffee. She can do whatever she wants and still look that way. She's thin. She doesn't diet. A good friend of my sister's is bulimic, but she doesn't blame magazines. She doesn't stare at pictures of thin women and puke her guts out. Our culture doesn't tolerate fat well.

Playboy: Are beautiful people treated differently?

Crawford: Let me tell you how they're treated. There are some guys at my gym who make a lot of money, are 5'2'', bald and have guts. Yet they criticize a woman who is 27 and five pounds overweight, saying, ''She has a big ass.'' I'm thinking, Hello? Have you looked in the mirror lately? Men just don't feel that pressure, but they put it on us and we put it on ourselves.

Playboy: Does the Cindy Crawford image pressure other women?

Crawford: I'm just lucky that God gave me a wonderful ''envelope.'' All I know is that I have the same insecurities as they do. I can't and don't want to look like ''Cindy Crawford'' every night. I know some people think, Yeah, that's easy for her to say--she always looks great.

Playboy: What are a couple of your insecurities?

Crawford: I did some love scenes with Billy Baldwin in Fair Game. I was naked except for a little patch, which was ridiculous--that is, until you see his patch. [Laughs] Meanwhile, I'm sitting around worrying about cellulite. I was supposed to be thinking about having movie sex, not about thigh spread.

Playboy: This is your first sex scene in your first movie. Any surprises?

Crawford: A couple. Of course it's strange to simulate lovemaking in front of an intimate crowd of 50 people. But it's even weirder watching the playback. I remember Billy saying, ''That was really cool when your hand went up there.'' When you have sex, you don't normally watch it afterward, unless you're kinkier than I am. Also, all of Billy's friends are telling him, ''Fucking a, man. You are so lucky! You're living my dream, man!'' He's had love scenes with Sharon Stone, and me, and other beautiful women, and all his friends are jealous.

Playboy: When you're making love on camera, is it tough to leave your personal routine at home?

Crawford: I wouldn't bring any of my special tricks. That would violate a relationship. [Smiles] You do see my breasts, though. I didn't have stunt breasts brought in.

In fact, after doing sex scenes on this movie all week, I have a bruise on my ass from sitting on a car, which was on an auto loader on a train. I told someone, ''There's a reason why people fuck in bed. It's more comfortable.'' The occasional floor or kitchen-counter thing, it's more the idea of it, the sexiness, than that it's comfortable for anybody.

Playboy: On an acting spectrum defined on one end by Meryl Streep and on the other by Hulk Hogan, where would you put yourself?

Crawford: [Laughs] Probably closer to Hulk Hogan.

Playboy: For years, you said you had no interest in making movies. Why risk the potential jeers that go with becoming an actress?

Crawford: Because it's challenging, and modeling isn't anymore.

Playboy: Not at all?

Crawford: Certain business ventures, such as starting a jewelry line or my deal with Pepsi, where I'm a player and a partner, are still interesting. Just to do a shoot for a day is pretty boring. But I was never dying to be an actress, just like I wasn't dying to be a model. Both just happened. And the more successful I got as a model, the more people would say, ''Do a movie.'' Scripts were sent.

Playboy: What kinds of roles?

Crawford: The character who says one word before she takes off her clothes. Modeling in a movie. It wasn't interesting. It also wasn't practical. Anything I would have wanted to do, actresses like Julia Roberts and Demi Moore would, of course, get. So it was always easy to say no to what was offered.

Playboy: How did Fair Game's producer, Joel Silver, persuade you to change your mind?

Crawford: He offered to pay me real money. He promised he would protect me and that I would have a good time. He understood that my MTV connection brings in the same young male audience he makes action movies for. And I knew him. He'd already offered me other movies, including Demolition Man.

Playboy: Sandra Bullock's part?

Crawford: Yeah. I didn't relate to the script because it wasn't a movie I'd normally go see.

Playboy: Isn't Fair Game also an action movie?

Crawford: Yes, but I liked my character. And her relationship with Billy Baldwin's character reminded me of Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis in Moonlighting. There's a lot of banter. Of course, some has been taken out because when you're getting chased by guys with machine guns, you can't be that off-the-cuff.

Playboy: You didn't mention if Silver also thought you could act.

Crawford: My acting ability was a big question, but not everything has to be Shakespeare. I don't have big dramatic scenes. I don't think of myself as an ''artist.'' It takes the pressure off. Besides, I think I'm pulling it off well.

Playboy: Do you think you'll get critically nailed no matter how good your performance actually is?

Crawford: Probably. But I must be doing something right. Warner Bros. is trying to negotiate with me for another movie. I think they see potential.

Playboy: Was the script written with you in mind?

Crawford: I think the original idea was to get me and Richard to do it together.

Playboy: Did you consider it?

Crawford: Richard doesn't do this kind of movie. Also, for my first movie I didn't want to hear ''the only reason she got that is because of Richard.'' And I would be more embarrassed to try acting in front of him than I would in front of strangers.

Playboy: Has living the actor's life helped you better understand Richard?

Crawford: I called him two weeks after we started shooting and said, ''I didn't realize how exhausting this is.'' He said it's probably even more tiring for me because it's my first time. I can't even relax when there are moments to relax. Now I really appreciate that we could go to dinner on a weeknight when he was shooting. I come home some nights now and I can't even talk.

Playboy: What do you want out of acting in the long run?

Crawford: I'm not sure. I just know I don't want to become addicted to it.

Playboy: What does that mean?

Crawford: Actors can get away with behavior that they wouldn't get away with in real life. This is my first role, but I can already see the attraction. I've been given permission to kiss Billy Baldwin, Chynna Phillips' fiancé1 Then there's the way you're treated.

When I first became famous my sister Danielle would always get mad at me because people treated me differently. They were nicer. I would say, ''It's not my fault.'' If I wanted to be bad on this movie, come in late, demand things, they'd let me get away with it as long as I came up with the goods. Modeling is somewhat like that, but movies are ten times worse. I'm also afraid of one day going to a movie opening and no one will want to take my picture. It probably won't happen, but I've had those thoughts. I don't want to fear not being in the limelight. I don't want to need that recognition.

Playboy: Isn't it too late to worry about that?

Crawford: I would love to think that I could move to Maine, get a farm and have a family. I would love to think that going to the grocery store and my kid bringing home an art project from school would be enough. But I'm afraid that I would miss being able to go into the Chanel boutique in Paris and hear them say, ''Pick out whatever dress you want.'' I'm afraid I need that, so I really fight against it.

Playboy: How?

Crawford: Here in Miami I go to the gym but I don't take the bodyguard--and believe me, they try to get me to take him everywhere. I drive myself, I put my quarters in the meter. I go to the grocery store myself. I don't want to be George Bush, going, ''Hey, they have these new inventions at the grocery store that scan prices.'' I don't want to get that removed from reality because then you're really lost. I don't want to lose my focus on the kind of life I really want.

Playboy: Which is?

Crawford: Well, I'll never have a normal, white-picket-fence life--it's just not in the cards for me this time around. But I don't want to be doing three movies a year, have my kids raised by nannies and never see the man I had my children with because we have no life together. I don't know how Demi Moore does it. She has a great career, three kids, the husband. She works constantly, does really good work and most of her choices are right on. She must manufacture time.

Playboy: Any other occupational hazards of supercelebrity?

Crawford: Celebrity, after you've had it for a while, is worth not a hell of a lot.

Playboy: All you celebrities say the same thing.

Crawford: It's really true. I get little perks. I get free shoes, sometimes. My sister and my mom are always saying, ''You make more money than we do and you always get free stuff.'' I say, ''Yeah, but then I've got to schmooze with the person or sign autographs.'' Nothing's free. I wish everyone could be famous for a little while. They could meet their biggest idols, have as much money as they need and be famous for a few minutes to realize that it doesn't fix anything. Whatever sadness or unhappiness you have isn't about not having money or not being famous or not meeting Michael Jordan. The good thing about celebrity is that you have everything, so you really have to look inside yourself and figure it out. You can't always be coveting the outside stuff because you have it all.

Playboy: But isn't it fair to say you're not really like the rest of us?

Crawford: What do you mean?

Playboy: That even though you have solid Midwest roots and are decent and kind, the world you live in has less and less connection to your former life.

Crawford: I always say that the biggest way I've changed is the kind of food that I like. I know about smoked salmon now, or bufalo mozzarella. I don't really think the connection is thinning out. If I had wanted to totally reinvent myself, I could have. But I didn't want to. When I go home, I still feel comfortable around my family and friends. I stay clear about who I am, and people's projections don't bother me much.

Playboy: What projections affect you the most?

Crawford: Women who look a certain way tend to make men act a certain way. People are normally nice to me, but sometimes it's not real. And I think women get intimidated by me.

Playboy: How do you handle it?

Crawford: Because my physical appearance might be intimidating to some people, I see it as my responsibility to make them not think that I think that it makes me any different. I feel like it's my job to make people feel comfortable because I'm already on some kind of weird pedestal. I really like people. No matter who the person is, I like to find some way of relating.

Playboy: Is success harder than failure?

Crawford: You're a disappointment to everybody if you don't keep topping yourself. If, on my 30th birthday, next year, I were to say, ''Hey, it's been great; I'm just gonna go,'' not only would I feel that I'm letting other people down, I would feel ungrateful, too. I'm lucky. I've been given so many opportunities to do things other people dream about. I'm afraid of not taking the opportunities and living up to the potential.

Playboy: One of those opportunities was posing for Playboy. Why did you do it?

Crawford: I learned something important when I started modeling in Chicago. I worked for only one photographer, Victor Skrebneski. That relationship ended when I moved to New York. He thought I'd abandoned him, because he had discovered me. So in New York I decided I would never again have just one main photographer. If one guy was off me for a while, somebody else would want to work with me. Because of that, when the Playboy opportunity came along, I wasn't afraid to take a chance. I was already good at saying ''Why not?''

Playboy: What effect did it have on you professionally?

Crawford: A few jobs were canceled when the issue came out, but that died off. If those same pictures had been in Vogue, no one would have said boo. They were beautiful and not at all questionable. What's more, I was already in Vogue. My agency was afraid that Vogue, and maybe Revlon, would react negatively. As it turned out, MTV was developing House of Style, and they were looking for a host. My producer, Alisa Bellettini, saw the Playboy layout, and that led to my getting the job. I was the first model she knew who had male fans. And because MTV's audience is more men than women, she needed a model who represented the fashion industry and could cross over.

Playboy: You're welcome.

Crawford: I've always done things that have increased my audience beyond people who read fashion magazines.

Playboy: And now you're a role model. How does that feel?

Crawford: It's a weird thing. A lot of people become role models just because they're famous. Fame should not mean that. Michael Jordan is a role model for anyone who wants to play basketball. How he achieved excellence in his sport should be example enough. Michael shouldn't be called a bad person because he gambles. He never said he didn't gamble. He said, ''I'm a good basketball player.''

Playboy: Do you feel the same kind of pressure?

Crawford: I don't want to fuck up publicly. Fortunately I never have, but the pressure not to isn't fun. When separating from Richard, I had to deal with the emotional agony of having problems in my marriage and with ''How are we going to announce it?''

Playboy: Are you tempted to change your behavior because the public is watching? Or do you just say, ''This is who I am''?

Crawford: Both. People watch what you do. My mom always says, 'Working at a bank is no different from doing what you do, except in scale.'' There's gossip at the office and on the movie set. I don't want it to seem like I'm obsessed with what people think of me. I have the same traditional Midwestern values as my parents. I haven't made a decision that Cindy Crawford the role model will act a certain way--though I don't smoke in photographs or in real life, and I don't trash hotel rooms. I try to avoid negative press. If I want to fight with my mom or my husband, I do it at home. I know I have to deal with the consequences of my actions.

Playboy: Are you and Richard getting divorced?

Crawford: We haven't filed or decided. I'm not feeling like I need or want to do that right now. We're just separated.

Playboy: Any chance that you'll get back together?

Crawford: I don't know.

Playboy: Would you rule it out?

Crawford: I would not rule it out, for me. Richard and I still really love each other. We still talk. I'll just speak for myself, OK? I still love Richard a lot and always will. On my birthday this year I was thinking about how hard it must be to be with someone for 50 or 60 years, just in terms of boredom. But I realized it will be hard no matter who I'm with. There will be years--if you added up the days you felt this way--when you probably can barely look at the person. Then I thought, If it's going to be so hard, I would like it to be with my husband.

Playboy: What caused the breakup?

Crawford: You have to understand how difficult these kinds of relationships are, when both people are not only famous but busy too. Any relationship is hard, period. Richard and I talk about how both of us are completely attended to at work all day long--treated specially even if we're not divas demanding it. We're still handed the cappuccino without even asking for it. And we would both wonder how either one of us could possibly give that to the other at home, because we're each only one person, not a hundred people.

Playboy: So did you have disagreements about who would, say, wash the dishes?

Crawford: No. Either someone else did it or I did it, or we'd go out.

Playboy: We heard that he didn't want kids and you did.

Crawford: No. That's a rumor I will dispel right now. Richard had been pushing me to have a child for the last two years. The rumor may have started because in the beginning I wanted kids and he wisely postponed it because he wasn't ready. I probably would have gotten pregnant right after I met him because at that time, I thought it would be cool to have a kid. I was 22. In a way, I wish I would have done it because I think the older you get, the longer you wait. You put too much thought into it.

Playboy: Was the age difference a factor?

Crawford: Probably not in the way people think. I just didn't feel strong enough to be a full partner. He was a man when I met him and I was 22. This is much more about me than what he was giving me. He was giving. He was nice to me. He never told me to sit and shut up. It was never that way. I just didn't have a handle on my own power, and, partly through work, I've learned that I can take control of things. Maybe that has inspired me to want to know myself in that same way and really be the grown-up person I want to be. I haven't dealt with a lot of failure other than--and I hate to even think of it this way--in my marriage.

Playboy: Some people say that the act of marriage often ruins a perfectly good relationship.

Crawford: It was just time for the issues to come up. I had unrealistic expectations about how being married would make me feel. I thought it would fix a lot of things. I often said to Richard, ''If we were married, this wouldn't bother me.'' Well, that's insane--of course it would still bother me, but I didn't know that. I just thought being married would complete me somehow, or make me feel safe.

Playboy: Would you do it all over again?

Crawford: Yeah. But I would have different expectations. Marriage is not a fix for everything. I'm still very pro-marriage, but when I was young I gave it a magical power. I don't know if I need marriage as much now as I did with Richard. Then I really needed to be married and I think part of it was because he had lived with other women before. I wanted something to say that I was above that. More serious than that.

Playboy: For your own self-respect?

Crawford: Right. I wanted to be the one. I didn't want to be another person he just lived with. I wanted all of our friends and myself and him to know that this was more than just us living together. I really needed it. He was as committed to the relationship as always, but he probably didn't need the paper as much as I did.

Playboy: Is the idea of a normal marriage--to anyone--outdated for you?

Crawford: Based on how my life is going to be and who I am, it has to be redefined. I probably will never have what my sister and her husband have, where they both get home around 5:30, they're in the same bed every night with each other, with their child, with no live-in people or assistants around. My life is different. Just this week I've been doing love scenes with Billy Baldwin. Billy and I couldn't stop laughing between takes because it was so surreal, so bizarre, so weird.

Playboy: Did it bother you when you were on the other end?

Crawford: It's harder to watch Richard being intimate on-screen when it's not a fuck scene. I remember in Sommersby, his character and Jodie Foster's had a baby together. Maybe it's because that was something I really wanted to do, but at the moment she handed him the baby I felt, Oh my God! That really upset me.

Playboy: A reviewer once called House of Style 'silly, superficial and wonderful.'' Is that a compliment?

Crawford: I'll take that. That's what fashion is all about. We do the show basically for the girl I was, living in the Midwest without access to Barneys and Agnes b. We let her know what's going on in fashion and how it can be accessible to her. We also try to demystify glamour.

Playboy: But is it still glamour if it's demystified?

Crawford: Maybe not. The really cool thing about today is that you don't have to be only glamorous. That's why when we featured Naomi Campbell, we showed her putting on zit cream.

Playboy: Did you lead a sheltered life?

Crawford: I had to grow up too fast. I had to learn how to sit in a room and have a grown-up conversation with an interviewer. I had to learn how to be savvy, to have business meetings and be taken seriously. Other stuff I didn't learn. I didn't date a whole lot. I missed getting to feel irresponsible. I modeled, worked and went to school at the same time. I never got to fuck up. It was too important not to. Ever since my brother got sick, and died, when I was ten, I didn't want to fuck up because I knew that my parents' minds were occupied by my brother being terminally ill. Any problem my sisters and I had couldn't be that big. We had to be good girls. After he died, we had to be good girls because we had to make up for their pain of having lost a son.

Playboy: Your parents divorced when you were a young girl. How did that affect you?

Crawford: When my parents divorced and my dad left us, we were on welfare for a few weeks. My mom didn't have a job and I remember her going to get the checks. I was so embarrassed. I grew up having only things I needed, and when I buy something now I still ask myself if I really need it. For a long time I didn't even have a VCR with a remote. I still have a much easier time buying stuff for other people. I bought my sister a great car for Christmas. She has a better car than I do. I probably wouldn't have bought the same car for myself.

I was never a selfish kid, saying, 'What about me? What about me?'' I don't want to go through that at 30, but there's a part of me that wants to learn how to be in touch with my needs and not only try to please everybody else all the time.

Playboy: How long will you continue to host House of Style?

Crawford: We'll probably choose another person sometime next year, a model who will start out doing pieces and then become more involved so I don't have to do every show--in case I've got another movie or other commitments.

Playboy: Any candidates?

Crawford: As many models as there are, a lot are European and their English isn't perfect; Claudia Schiffer, for instance. Also, we need someone who has the fashion industry stamp of approval and who also appeals to men.

Playboy: You mean there are models guys don't like?

Crawford: Certain models cross over more. Kathy Ireland, for instance. Guys really know her. Elle Macpherson's never been in Vogue, not even on the inside. But guys love her. Linda Evangelista, who is very high fashion and who all the photographers love as a muse, has never been in Sports Illustrated. Elle would like the stamp of approval from the fashion industry, whereas Linda might like to have the sexy swimsuit pictures.

Playboy: Do you have to work extra hard to protect your femininity when you're powerful?

Crawford: To me, feminism and femininity are not that far apart. That's partly because of the generation I'm from. I didn't grow up thinking I had to be the best girl, or that I could be just as good as the boys. I just assumed I was. I don't have that whole ERA and the women's liberation thing hanging over me.

Fortunately, women in the two decades before me did a lot of that work. Also, modeling is probably one of the only professions where as many, if not more, women have power as men. I can be totally feminine and make a lot of money and have power. With movies, it's a boys' club. I'm sure they think I'm bitchy sometimes. I was the other night and at the end of the evening I apologized. I said, ''I have PMS. Sorry I'm being a bitch.'' I gave that to them. [Laughs]

Playboy: Where do you go from here? Beyond acting, is there another goal?

Crawford: I still don't know. If I had realistic goals, they would have been a lot smaller than what I've achieved. I'm a pretty realistic person. I wouldn't have said, ''OK, I want to be on the cover of Vogue, I want to make a movie, I want to do a number-one-selling exercise video.'' Maybe somewhere in the deepest part of my subconscious I want to act, but I don't think so. I haven't really thought about it. I don't recall any great passion for it.

Playboy: Yet you've shown real dedication to your work.

Crawford: If I'm going to do it, then I'm really going to do it. Sometimes it's annoying to do something first, like House of Style, only to have 20 others copy me and make it seem like it was easy to do all along. Or I do an exercise video, then the next year five models have videos out. I'm proud that I've redefined how models are seen. I've shown the modeling industry, and other models, that we are the bosses of our careers. We can have more than a three-year run; we can really turn it into something.

Playboy: You'll be 30 next February. Any thoughts?

Crawford: I thought I'd be in a different place. I thought I'd have kids by now. But you can't plan everything. I still really want to have a family, though. I'm not freaking out. I guess that means I'm a grown-up. I also know I'm responsible for my personality. I can't blame it on anyone else. And I don't need to be Learjetting around. As far as what I'm going to do about my working life, I'm still looking for that passion.

Playboy: What does that mean, exactly?

Crawford: I was at a friend of my sister's for a party in Darien, Illinois, and this really nerdy guy started talking. He was in big real estate. He started explaining it and in front of my eyes he got very attractive because he was so passionate. I feel sometimes that I want to have that kind of energy for what I'm doing, because I spend so much time at it. Right now I'm working 14 hours a day. I want to have a passion for it instead of thinking, This isn't a bad way to spend the time and make money. [Pauses] But maybe my passion doesn't have to be for what I do; maybe it can be for my family or for life. Some people have it about their spirituality. I just know I haven't found that in work yet. A person will always have passion for her family, but even if you're a great mom, you still have some time on your hands. So what's going to be my other passion? That's the big question.

Each year I've thought, This is going to be my biggest money year, so I'll just be happy. But I just saw my tax return and thought, Wow! That's pretty cool.