`MOTHER' OF ALL ROLES : FOR REYNOLDS AND BROOKS, ART IMITATES LIFE IN NEW FILM.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Writer

As mothers go, she's been much speculated about. After all, daughter Carrie Fisher made her literary debut with a thinly veiled autobiography, ``Postcards From the Edge,'' that described a drug-addicted actress who battles with a spotlight-stealing show-biz mother.

So it would seem like a bold move for actress Debbie Reynolds to make a movie called ``Mother'' in which she plays the title role.

Then again, she didn't exactly go looking for the part.

Reynolds says she was minding her own business in Las Vegas, where she stars in a comedy and dance revue at her Debbie Reynolds Casino and Hollywood Movie Museum, when the phone rang.

``Carrie called me one night and said, `Mother, I want you to fly in and read for Albert,' '' recalls Reynolds, a performer through-and-through who acts out all the speaking parts in the stories she tells.

``I said, `Albert who?' She said, `Oh, Mother, Albert Brooks. You know Albert.' ''

Indeed, Fisher and Brooks, a filmmaker and actor whose well-observed satirical comedies like ``Lost in America'' and ``Modern Romance'' have earned him a strong following, have been pals since childhood.

``Well, Albert said he had two scenes he wanted me to read,'' Reynolds continues. ``So I read the first scene, and he said, `Fine, that's it, you've got the part.' I said, `Albert, dear, how can that be? Where are all the people who make these decisions?' He said, `I'm the producer, the director and the writer, and I make the decisions.' ''

Reynolds, 64, leans forward and her voice goes low, sugary and flirtatious - the kind of approach that makes a guy feel 10 feet tall. ``I said, `Albert, that's thrilling! You're so powerful!' ''

It was an example of old-style show business meeting new-style methods, and it played out over and over again on the set of the movie. After all, Reynolds, who hadn't done a movie role in 25 years, is very much a product of her generation.

Brooks, who's 49 and very much a product of his generation, found that out on the set.

``She came in on her own on a Sunday and spent the whole day on the kitchen set, just putting dishes away so she could find them and make it look like her own,'' says Brooks in wonderment. ``I mean, it was cool. I was impressed.''

Recalls Reynolds, who shared all the kitchen scenes with Brooks, ``That was very strange to Albert. I asked him if he would do it with me, and he said no, he was going to rest that day.''

Reynolds, who enjoyed her heyday in the '50s and '60s with musicals such as the classic ``Singing in the Rain'' (1952) and ``The Unsinkable Molly Brown'' (1964), says her fastidious approach is merely a product of her upbringing in the now-defunct studio system.

``Our training was very different then,'' she says. ``We were taught how to match every shot - how to pick up a glass on a certain line and put it down on a certain line, and do it over and over again, so that the editors could cut the picture. We would rehearse so much that it became second nature.''

``We rehearsed until we got it perfect, so we could relax in the scene. That's how I worked on this movie, because that's the only way I know how to work on a film.''

Reynolds even marked off her kitchen and dining room at home to duplicate scenes in the movie and hired an actor to run dialogue with her.

``I had huge amounts of dialogue to memorize, and I spent every waking hour preparing,'' she says.

It wasn't wasted on Brooks.

``She is the most professional person I've ever worked with in my life,'' he says. ``So many people doubted that she could do this because the role is very low-key, very real, and that wasn't asked of her in the great musical days.''

Brooks says his own mother, who was the model for many of the movie character's eccentricities, was one of the doubters. ``She saw Debbie as that Las Vegas person, and she didn't think she could do the turn.''

Now critics are praising Reynolds' performance as a possible Oscar contender, and she already has received a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a musical or comedy.

And Carrie Fisher, after seeing the movie, called Brooks in tears. ``She was blown away,'' says the filmmaker. ``She said, `I can't believe it, I can't believe it! That's my mother!' ''

Wasn't Brooks a little nervous about hiring her in the first place? ``Well, yeah,'' he says with a laugh. ``I saw `Postcards From the Edge.' So I asked Carrie, `She's not gonna drink, is she?' Actually, that's not fair, because the character doesn't drink like that in the book. (Director) Mike Nichols added that for the movie, and Carrie was always upset about it.' ''

But Brooks said while verisimilitude was always one of his goals for Reynolds' performance, the character was based on his own mother.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Brooks is the son of radio comedian Harry Einstein and a mother who raised three sons. ``My mother was an actress and a brilliant singer when my father met her,'' he says. ``My father had a radio show, and my mother wanted to be on it, but my father didn't encourage her. He said that the children would need her. I think she was always a little sorry that she didn't pursue it more, and she told me that recently.''

In ``Mother,'' Brooks plays a neurotic science-fiction writer who, after two divorces, decides that the root of his troubles with women must lie with his mother. In order to explore his relationship with her, he moves back in with her - something the happily settled widow is none too thrilled about.

``When I talk to my own mother on the phone, she's the one who wants to hang up,'' says Brooks. ``They've got other things to do. They're not going to stay the same their whole lives.''

Brooks says there are two kinds of mothers - the kind who think their children can do no wrong, and the other kind. ``This movie is about the other kind,'' he says with a smile.

Brooks' father died when he was 11, and he says his own mother was always willing to be critical of his show-business aspirations.

``It's not because she didn't love me - I just don't think she got it,'' he says. ``We didn't share the same sense of humor. She was always telling me that I should have something to fall back on because this was a rough business and she didn't want me going through hard times.''

Reynolds, who entered films in 1948 after winning the Miss Burbank beauty contest, says her own mother was also of the critical stripe. ``Oh, she's finally changed her opinion of my work - she feels I've gotten good after 48 years in show business,'' says Reynolds. ``But for the longest time, it was always, `When are you going to get out of this silly business? Why did you dye your hair that color - it looks awful. Why are you wearing that dress - it doesn't become you.' ''

Brooks says he has spent some time musing about whether a critical parent is a help or a hindrance to a child's drive to succeed.

``There was one person I knew growing up who was unconditionally loved and thought of as a genius - and ironically, he's never produced anything,'' he said. ``I don't know - it would be one of the great definitive studies to compare children and what they've accomplished according to how their parents reacted to their ambitions.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Mama's boy

Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds are tied together by a primal relationship in `Mother'

(2) ``I had huge amounts of dialogue to memorize, and I spent every waking hour preparing,'' Debbie Reynolds says of ``Mother,'' in which her character's life is disrupted when her son (Albert Brooks) returns home.

(3) Albert Brooks, director, writer and star of ``Mother,'' says he was initially wary of casting Debbie Reynolds due to the portrayal of the mother character in her daughter Carrie Fisher's ``Postcards From the Edge.''

(4) Brooks stars as John Henderson, a neurotic, twice-divorced writer who thinks returning to his roots - and his mother - is the key to understanding his trouble with women.