Cybill liberty: Cybill Shepherd is moonlighting this season on The L Word as a married woman questioning her sexuality--a role she's been rehearsing for years.

Cybill Shepherd, the eternal queen of blond Southern belles, floats on her trademark tennies through the courtyard of her somewhat humble (save for the pool and spectacular view) home atop a hill in Encino in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley. She comes to a lurch, however, when she spots an unfamiliar someone, namely me, who has been buzzed in through the security gate.

Her trademark glare--part suspicious, part amused--quickly gives way to downhome charm. After checking off some maternal chores (her twins, Zach and Ariel, 19, are on her mind) she plops herself on a cushy couch in the living room, doffs those sneakers, and peels off her socks,' "Oh, I'm always barefoot," she informs me.

So when one of her German (yes) shepherds passes gas, I feel free to bring it to' her attention. "Whoa! Let me open the door," Shepherd says with a hearty laugh. The culprit is splayed c'est la vie style on the, hardwood floor, but not for long, "C'mon, kid, let's go outside," she says

Leave the blanching to Laura Bush. After all, this is a woman who lost her virginity at age 16, dallied with Elvis, and in her first movie, 1971's The Last Picture Show, angrily and famously flung her panties at a lousy lover.

She's been a pageant queen, a curvy cover girl, an accomplished torch song chanteuse (remember that great noir instigator of backstage bitchfests (rumor has it that she and Christine Baranski, costar of Shepherd's eponymous '90s sitcom, were not exactly Lucy and Ethel off: camera). Add a pinch of sage--and her ballsy turn as Martha Stewart in two biting small-screen flicks--and you have the makings of a dream date for lesbians and gay men.

Calling her a gay rights activist is almost an understatement. She was one of the biggest names to stride along with the Millennium March. And the same-sex marriage tussle? "It's not just about love," she says, stretching out those tootsies. "It's about the right to have sex with who you want. The right to feel free."

The legend is putting her lips where her mouth is with a nine-episode role as a closeted lady-lover this season on Showtime's The L Word, airing Sundays at 10 P.M. Eastern/Pacific. Episode 2 introduced Shepherd's character, Phyllis "Heads Will Roll" Kroll, a rich, married power boss with two grown kids and, it turns out, a hidden yen for the ladies. When Phyllis takes a gander at new employee Bette's (Jennifer Beals) very bouncy lesbian circle in episode 3, she asks Bette to help her go girl huntin', thereby freaking out her daughter (played by Shepherd's real-life eldest child, 27-year-old Clementine Shepherd-Ford). "[Phyllis] has had the perfect life, gotten everything she's wanted--money, power, and a wonderful husband," Shepherd dishes. "But obviously she's suppressed this part of herself." The star dons a loaded smile before adding, "I don't know. It was easy and exciting to be in that place."

Turns out Shepherd really enjoyed her love scenes with "a certain actress" on the show. "I was very turned on immediately," she reveals. One scene asked Shepherd's costar "to plant a real smackeroo kiss on me. But I didn't let her do it. I kissed her. It was surprising and wonderful and crazy," Shepherd says. Alas, she didn't get naked for the camera. "No, no. I won't do nude scenes anymore," she says. "I appear nude underneath the sheets. I wouldn't want to frighten people." Besides, she adds, sex scenes are "distracting. When I see nude scenes, I go, 'Oh, they're nude.'"

Shepherd's off-camera dalliances with women have a more coquettish ring to them. Has she ever fooled around with a woman? "yeah," she says somewhat hesitantly. Has she ever been in love with a woman? "Yes. But we never acted on it." Years ago, she confides, "I was in love with a woman and in love with her male partner. I was kind of on the verge of becoming his lover. She said, 'You know, women should never do that to women.' I backed off. And we're all still very good friends. That woman will always be somehow one of the loves of my life. She will always be beautiful."

The famous vixens Shepherd has met and fancied through the years? "Most of them were very powerful," she confides. "Martina Navratilova--I had an incredible sexual feeling for her." Another woman who made her tingly was the "very attractive" Paula Poundstone, who, Shepherd reveals--hold on--was her first choice for the Maryann Thorpe role on Cybill that went to Baranski.

But when it comes down to sealing the female deal, she admits, "I couldn't go there. I don't run, but I don't move." Sighing like a D.H. Lawrence lass who isn't as wild as she might wish, she adds, "I can be, yeah, kinda reserved." Still, Shepherd-who at 57 still boasts unblemished cheeks and a famously upturned nose that hasn't been touched by a Beverly Hills surgeon--doesn't count out a lesbian affair. "Especially as I've grown older, I'm more open to it," she says. Her current crush may be Salma Hayek. "I've fantasized about her for years," she notes, but "right now I have a boyfriend and we're monogamous."

Shepherd's sexual intrigue is better left to her next autobiography, but it's obvious that she delights in ruffling the status quo. A self-proclaimed radical feminist, she once said she "always wanted to be Tarzan."

Last fall she hit the campaign trail for straight gay rights champion and fellow Memphis native Steve Cohen, who went on to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives--no mean feat in Tennessee.

"I grew up in the segregated South and I felt the pain of 'whites-only' and 'coloreds-only,'" she says, explaining her sense of mission. "I somehow internalized the inequality." Her mother, who still lives in Memphis, has a touch of the old South in her even today. "When I told my mother I was doing the show she said, 'Oh, no, Cybill, I hope you're not playing one of them.' I said, 'Just don't watch. Ill send you Moonlighting DVDs.'" Big laugh. "Really, I have as much admiration for my mother as I do anyone. But I didn't come to it till, I think, in the last five years. She smokes three packs a day, she enjoys her white wine, and she has a hell of a time. I love her."

Shepherd also goes her own way. On America's Next Top Model: "I don't know why they have to show all that humiliation." On her penchant toward clothing her statuesque, Pilates-straight physique in sweatpants: "I'm not allowed out of the house unless my kids pick out what I wear." On her self-absorbed streak: "First of all, it's incredibly boring. You'll lose your mind or kill yourself if you stay on that track. It's been a very big thing to me to realize that I don't have to try to be special, that I don't have to sound witty or intelligent. That I can walk the way I walk and go to a theater and just sit there. I want to relax more and not worry so much."

So, kicked off sneakers aside, what's the most butch thing about her? "Butch is such an old-fashioned word. I went to a lesbian party once and the women were all looking at me: 'Is Cybill a bottom or is she a top? She's a bottom!' They were all laughing hysterically and I didn't even know what it meant." Once in the loop, the star had a few L words with the ladies: "I said I'm a bottom who likes to be on top."

Griffiths is the TV critic for Us Weekly and writes profiles for InStyle and Glamour.