NEWS LITE : ACTRESS SHOCKED BY BOND STATURE.

The newest Bond Girl says the idea of playing opposite Agent 007 at first excited her, until she turned on the TV and saw her casting announced on the evening news.

``I didn't realize just how huge James Bond was until that moment,'' Denise Richards says in the December issue of Cosmopolitan. ``It scared me, because I thought, `Wow, this is a huge move, people are going to see this!' I'm used to doing stuff where you never know if anyone's going to see it.''

Richards, who has acted in ``Wild Things'' and ``Starship Troopers,'' will play a nuclear weapons expert, Dr. Christmas Jones, in ``The World is not Enough,'' which opens Nov. 19.

As for her co-star, Richards says Pierce Brosnan is ``a class act, a real gentleman.''

Artworks fetch millions at auction

Amedeo Modigliani's ``Nude Sitting on a Divan'' has been sold for $16.8 million, setting a record for the artist at auction, while an Edgar Degas sculpture also broke the mark for the artist best known for his paintings of ballerinas. The Modigliani work sold for $16,777,500, including commission, at an auction of impressionist works at Sotheby's on Thursday night, eclipsing the record set a year ago of $15,127,500 for ``Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne.''

Serial killer doesn't belong in top 100

Spike Lee might approve, but including David ``Son of Sam'' Berkowitz in the century's 100 most influential New Yorkers is bound to rub more than a few the wrong way.

It can be argued that serial killers are influential; after all, they influence people to die and their friends and relatives to grieve. But inclusion on such a list should be viewed as an honor - recognizing Berkowitz is in incredibly bad taste.

The New York Post obtained the provisional list Thursday from the Museum of the City of New York.

The list features some true New York characters, like politicos Rudy Giuliani, David Dinkins, Bella Abzug and Ed Koch. Empire State builder Robert Moses is there, along with Donald Trump. There's jazzmen Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, director Woody Allen, the Gershwin brothers, Oscar Hammerstein and master architect Philip Johnson.

Tonya's reception as pro a bit chilly

Tonya Harding's skating problems aren't over.

After five years away from competition, she made her professional debut last month and came in second. But the appearance hasn't translated to lucrative deals, said her manager, Michael Rosenberg.

``I've had calls up the kazoom for interviews,'' Rosenberg said in Portland, Ore. ``But that doesn't mean any money. Maybe what I've set her up for is to have a good next season.''

Harding, 29, was convicted in the knee-whacking of rival Nancy Kerrigan in 1994 and banned from amateur figure skating.

Crazy Horse nightclub to close doors, mosey on down to Irvine

It's curtains for the award-winning Crazy Horse nightclub - the venerable Old West-themed, red-meat emporium in Santa Ana that has played host to Garth Brooks, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

Often voted nightclub of the year by the Academy of Country Music, the institution will shut down Monday in Santa Ana then reopen next month at the Irvine Spectrum.

The 20-year-old Crazy Horse Steak House is where Owens made a dramatic comeback after cancer surgery and where Haggard renounced his retirement. The 70-year-old Owens performs Monday's farewell concert.

``I know it's moving and it's still going to be there, but it's still sad for me,'' Owens said. ``I've probably played there 25 or 30 times, and I cannot remember a crowd there that was not absolutely just wild with enthusiasm.''

Co-owner Jay Nuccio, who bought the Crazy Horse two years ago from the original investors, decided to make the move to expand the club's nationally recognized 250-seat concert hall and restaurant.

``Any time you move an icon, it's a risk,'' said Nuccio, who is partners with the club's director of marketing and entertainment, Brad ``Paco'' Miller Jr. ``But we felt there also was a risk of staying here and not doing anything.''

Atlanta's young pandas picky eaters

If a single food constituted 95 percent of your diet, you might get a little particular too.

After Zoo Atlanta's new pandas, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, turned up their noses at bamboo from a Savannah farm, zoo officials tried serving locally grown bamboo.

The 2-year-old pandas, who arrived last week from Sichuan province in southwest China, like it just fine.

``They're quite the connoisseurs,'' zoo spokeswoman Gail Eaton said Friday.

The Savannah bamboo is similar to the pandas' diet in China, so the zoo planned deliveries by refrigerated truck three times weekly at a cost of $2,350 per week. Eaton said zoo officials consider it a great relief that the bears prefer the Atlanta bamboo, which is donated.

``It's like a fine wine, you know,'' she said of bamboo. ``They're just extremely fussy eaters, and their tastes are unpredictable.''

Tim Robbins no fan of politics, Giuliani

Actor/director Tim Robbins may have taken on political subjects with such films as ``Bob Roberts'' and the coming ``Cradle Will Rock,'' but that doesn't mean he likes politics.

``Political people are people who do things for their own benefit,'' Robbins says in the December issue of W magazine. ``When you make a political decision, you're not making an emotional, humanist decision. You're making a decision that is calculated and cold.''

``Cradle Will Rock'' follows the plight of a 1930s New Deal-sponsored theater troupe whose funding is canceled by Congress just before its opening performance. Robbins directs a cast that includes John and Joan Cusack, Bill Murray, John Turturro, Cherry Jones, Vanessa Redgrave and Robbins' longtime companion, Susan Sarandon.

Robbins, who lives in New York, says he does vote, and he indicated what his preference would be in a Senate race between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

``If Giuliani were running against a fire hydrant, I'd vote for the fire hydrant.''

News Lite is compiled by Karen Duffy from Daily News staff and wire reports.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1) HOT COLLECTIBLE

Hot Wheels toy car collector Chris Marshall has agreed to sell his one-of-a-kind, hot-pink, die-cast prototype of a 1969 Volkswagen Beach Bomb van, to Hot Wheels for $72,000.

(2) RICHARDS

(3) BUCK OWENS

(4) ROBBINS