Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

It's hectic time for Margaret Cho — with her role on Fox's "'Til Death," plus her starring stint in the comedy/burlesque show "The Sensuous Woman," which is bound for off-Broadway in the fall. She also recently completed directing the short film "Two Sisters." And she's hosting "Outlaugh" on Logo, the gay network.

Her current success comes after years of opting to work outside the mainstream rather than compromise her voice. The controversial comedienne admits, "It's always been kind of difficult for me, a struggle because I'm so different. It always feels like a hard time, so I really don't know if this is a comeback."

It is, however, clearly a long way from her trials and tribulations with "All-American Girl" — the 1994 ABC comedy that thrust her into the limelight as the first Asian American sitcom star. Initially based on her club material, it was altered into a conventional show that was a bad fit for the decidedly unconventional performer, who even crash-dieted in an effort to appear more like other TV headliners. Cho's experience caused depression that led her into alcoholism and a near-suicidal descent. Looking back, she says, "I was very young, very impressionable. I liked to hang out and party, but I outgrew it."

Her advice to young female stars in similar straits today? "There's no escape. No matter how hard, you must still wake up as yourself. What you need is dedication. That's really the trick, the best advice I can give."

These days the hard-partying life has been replaced by hard work and family. "I spend my time with my husband and our three dogs. And I love doing lots of different kinds of work behind and in front of the camera." She still lards her jokes with pro-gay, anti-Bush material. The latter has led to her being un-invited to appearances and her microphone once being turned off at a corporate gig. But she says heat over the matter has cooled. "Now more people are in agreement with me."

SUDDENLY, SERIES: "Brothers & Sisters'" newest addition, Emily VanCamp (cq), says she's learning about her character right along with the audience — and the show's writers. "It was all a very last-minute thing," says the former "Everwood" regular of her recent introduction. She's playing the Walker family's half-sister, Rebecca Harper — the surprise love child of their late father's longtime affair with Holly Harper (Patricia Wettig) on the hit ABC drama.

"They had no set idea and Greg Berlanti (the show's producer, with whom she'd also worked on 'Everwood') said 'Let's just see where this goes, let's see what you bring to the character.'"

VanCamp adds, "It's been an interesting process to discover this character along with the writers. I've always sort of known the characters before I started playing them, so it's really been fun for me as an actress. I get to experiment and figure this out with everybody. You get to grow and learn a lot from this kind of experience." One thing she knows for sure is that, "you're going to see this character unravel and open up to this family as the episodes go on. There's a rough edge to her. She grew up with a single mom who was more of a best friend than a mother. She had to fend for herself and when you don't have any male influences in your life it toughens you up as a girl, so she has a chip on her shoulder."

FAUX NEWS CHANNEL: David Alan Grier is getting ready to do a pilot presentation for Comedy Central called "Chocolate News," for which he'd serve as executive producer and news anchor. The underrated funnyman is filling the ranks of potential castmates to serve as writer/performer/reporters on the show that would concentrate mainly on African American news of the day. After "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," it seems like a reasonable next step.

THE REAL DEAL: Broadcast journalist Willow Bay spent the better part of a year overseeing research into the thoughts and feelings of women in the middle of their 20s for her March 26 Lifetime TV special, "Spotlight 25." Among them: Jennifer Hudson, who went on to become a movie star and Oscar winner with "Dreamgirls." According to Bay, Hudson was "very eloquent on the issue of image and what it means not to fit into the 'appropriate' image — and what really caused her to reaffirm her sense of herself, to acknowledge, 'Hey, I'm normal. Those images and standards of beauty out there in magazines and on TV are not normal.'" Obviously, Hudson's wisdom paid off for her.

"Spotlight 25" will also show a bundle of fascinating facts about today's young women. "I was struck by how this generation thinks very strategically about their future," she notes. She also says that for many of the women, the notion of a "quarter-life crisis" is quite real. "As one of them put it, 'That's so me.' Even if this woman is not in a real crisis, for many it's as simple as not measuring up to their own expectations of where they should be by the age of 25."

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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