IT'S NOT GREEK TO HER NIA VARDALOS MINES HER OWN HILARIOUS LIFE FOR NEW FILM `CONNIE AND CARLA'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

If Nia Vardalos had gone back and scratched out the original title on the script of her new film and replaced it with ``My Big Fat Drag Queen Fantasy'' or ``Other People's Big Fat Expectations About My Big Fat Next Movie,'' it might have been a bit much. On the other hand, it's understandable.

After all, how do you follow the sleeper hit ``My Big Fat Greek Wedding,'' the film Vardalos wrote and starred in? Not only did it become the highest-grossing independent film of all time, taking in $241 million at the box office (then throw in the DVD sales), it yielded a 2002 Oscar writing nomination for the actress. Now the producers of ``Connie and Carla'' - the real title of the new film with Vardalos as the star and screenwriter - hope her name will get people into the theater, starting Friday when it opens.

As to why she chose this route rather than to parlay her new fame by acting in other people's movie, Vardalos says, ``I couldn't really take the parts being offered to me, where somebody would give me a huge amount of money, if I didn't feel an emotional connection to the character. I figured I've got to go with what I know - and I have to take Rita Wilson with me.''

Wilson, along with her husband, Tom Hanks, were behind getting ``Greek Wedding'' to the big screen after she saw Vardalos' one-women show. When people came calling asking if she had anything else after the film started getting buzz, Vardalos pulled out her script for ``Connie and Carla,'' which Spyglass Entertainment bought, and Wilson became a producer on the new film.

Loyalty and connection: Those are good things, says Vardalos.

``I have the same manager, the same agent, the same lawyer, the same friends. I surround myself with real people who will tell me the truth. Like, 'You look fat in those pants.' That's a friend to me.''

``Nia loves to laugh and be around funny people,'' says Michael Lembeck, the director of ``Connie and Carla.'' ``She can be subtle, but she loves to just hang it out there, and you don't get a lot of women doing that.''

``Connie and Carla'' is about a pair of song-and-dance-loving best friends from the Midwest (played by Vardalos and Toni Collette) who hide out from mobsters by moving to L.A. and impersonating drag queens in a West Hollywood club. Complications arise when the act hits big and Connie (Vardalos' character) falls in love with a nice - but very straight - guy played by David Duchovny.

``I know Connie and Carla. I know this world,'' says the 41-year-old Vardalos, who's not just saying that because she wrote the script. Like the semi-autobiographical ``Wedding,'' ``Connie and Carla'' is based on aspects of her own life.

Vardalos says she knows the world of drag performance through scrupulous research. But she's familiar with the supper club/dinner theater circuit because it used to be her world. Before ``Greek Wedding,'' and before her days doing stand-up with Chicago's Second City, Vardalos was a self-professed musical theater geek who performed in the kinds of houses where you would sing in the first act; serve red, green or yellow dessert at intermission; and jump back on stage for the second act.

``My parents took me to dinner theater when I was a kid,'' says Vardalos, who grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. ``Ribeye steak and a show and you only have to park your car once. I thought, 'This is great!' ''

It's another ``I'm a geek and proud of it!'' line, and a chat with the amiable Vardalos is full of them.

One thing that may surprise audiences, says ``Connie'' producer Gary Barber, is ``that Nia can really sing.'' But, despite all the musical numbers, Vardalos sees the film as a romantic comedy.

``Greek Wedding'' may have upped Vardalos' clout and her price, but the shame quotient for the sake of comedy has stayed pretty consistent. Anybody willing to put herself on screen looking as she did as pre-makeover Toula Portokalos in the early frames of ``Greek Wedding'' probably isn't going to worry about the size of her trailer.

Connie undergoes her own set of comic indignities, from being felt up by disbelieving drag queens to enough head-on collisions with Duchovny's Jeff to compile a blooper reel. Given that it's Vardalos writing her own character's pratfalls, you've got to wonder if the lady is working out her own demons.

Nope, says director Lembeck. That's just Nia.

``She as energized and funny, as loud, personable, affable and accessible and just plain fun to spend time with as she was when I remembered working with her before.''

In the fall of 1999, Lembeck, a regular director on the sitcom ``Two Guys and a Girl'' directed an unknown actress who played a temp in the office where one of the show's main characters worked.

``Man, she was really funny,'' he recalls of Vardalos. ``She had great instincts, great comic chops, and she filled every moment. Even when the camera left her, I watched her working. I really liked that. She was always working. She told me about this Greek thing she was thinking about and beginning to write. Who knew?''

Vardalos remembers doing publicity for the ``Wedding'' film as it crossed the $20 million threshold during the 2002 Fourth of July holiday weekend and continued to climb. Co-star John Corbett predicted the film could make $30 million, which prompted Vardalos to shush him out of fear the prediction could jinx the film.

``Everybody asks for the one moment (when I realized it would be big). There was no one moment,'' says Vardalos. ``It was a time dash. It was almost like I was watching myself in stop-gap animation.''

But if you wonder whether an enormous hit on your feature-film debut and a sitcom spinoff - the short-lived ``My Big Fat Greek Life'' - are enough to make a person overly image conscious, Vardalos and her collection of geeky or embarrassing anecdotes are here to tell you otherwise.

``That story about the agent who told me to come back after I'd gotten a boob job and a nose job - that did happen, and it makes for a great story. It makes it seem like I was angry. No. More like, 'Oh my God that was so rude.' I laugh about it with my girlfriends. It's like when I saw one of my ex-boyfriends after 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' had done well. 'Well, hello.' And a bird crapped on my head! That's funny.''

Lembeck says nothing has changed in her life except she's wealthier and famous. ``Now having had this amazing success, everybody's waiting to see if she's a one-hit wonder - and they're about to discover she's so not.''

Whatever the outcome, Vardalos seems to be grounded in reality.

``I do feel that I'm just an ordinary person that something extraordinary happened to. That really is my mantra. At the same time, I only have one life, and I'm going to live every day to the fullest.''

What, every day?

``And on others, I'll lay on the couch and read People.''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Her big fat new film

Will Nia Vardalos strike comic gold again with `Connie and Carla'?

(2) no caption (Nia Vardalos)

(3) Midwest best friends (Nia Vardalos, left, and Toni Collette) hide from mobsters by moving to L.A. and impersonating drag queens in a West Hollywood club in ``Connie and Carla.''