NEWS REAL\The Ann Martin factor?\KCBS anchor provides some fodder for Pfeiffer.

Byline: Ray Richmond 

Just who is Michelle Pfeiffer supposed to be in the movie "Up Close and Personal," anyway?

The speculation has centered on Jessica Savitch, the onetime NBC News golden girl who died in a car accident after hitting a downward spiral of booze and drugs. But in the film, Pfeiffer's character is neither self-destructive nor ill-fated. So much for faithful biography.

There is, however, the Ann Martin factor.

Ann Martin?

Yes, Channel 2's "Action News" co-anchor at 5 and 11 p.m. likes to think there may just be a little bit of her in Pfeiffer's portrayal, since the actress spent a couple of days with Martin at the KCBS offices while researching her role last summer.

"I was just a tiny tile in the mosaic she created, like a little background piece of blue," Martin said.

Pfeiffer and "Up Close and Personal" director Jon Avnet paid Martin a visit in the hopes that the actress might pick up a few pointers and "see what being an anchor was really like," Martin recalled.

"Michelle was very serious, very intense - and very charming. We chatted about all kinds of things. But what she was most interested in was the nuts and bolts of what I do - what a day in the life of an anchor looks and feels like."

So Martin demonstrated just how mundane and uneventful her job can be, reading wire copy, editing stories and taking meetings with producers.

"You have to do a lot of your own makeup, there is no wardrobe person there for you, nobody to do your hair," Martin said. "I think I did a lot to help deglamorize the job for her."

Not that having Michelle Pfeiffer hanging around your desk made for another boring day at the office. There were a lot of star-struck people inside the jaded newsroom to have "not just a movie star but a luminous one there," Martin said. "I was always observing her observing me out of the corner of my eye."

Martin isn't sure why Pfeiffer chose her to hang with, and she never asked.

"It was just hugely flattering," Martin recalled.

"The thing that really struck me about her is how serious she was, how those big eyes soaked everything in. She absorbed it all. She works so hard. And she is so stunningly pretty. Nobody got much work done when she was around."

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Photo (1--2) "I was just a tiny tile in the mosaic she created, like a little background piece of blue," Ann Martin says of her day spent under the watchful eye of Michelle Pfeiffer. (3) CHANNING