RAPPER ELLIOTT REVEALS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN HER PAST.

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Hip-hop superstar Missy ``Misdemeanor'' Elliott, who's joined supermodel Iman to create Misdemeanor Lipstick, will donate her profits to aid the effort to stop domestic violence. The cause is personal to her.

``It's something I've been through - watching my mother being abused by my father,'' she tells this column. She plans to ``give 100 percent'' of her share from the lipstick sales to Break the Cycle, a nonprofit organization whose mission is ending domestic violence by working proactively with youth.

Elliott says the project has the full support of her mother, who doesn't mind her divulging their personal tale of abuse. ``She knew what impact it had on me,'' says Elliott. ``She thought it was good to get it off my chest. For so long, they thought I was going to have to see a psychiatrist and stuff like that. She also thought it was good to talk for the sake of other people going through domestic violence.''

Meanwhile ...

The 25-year-old Elliott - who's already worked with such names as Aaliyah, Scary Spice, Paula Cole, Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston - expects her sophomore Electra Records CD, ``Da Real World,'' to hit record stores June 22. However, the rapper/singer/producer/songwriter has to postpone touring because of producing commitments she's made to Sean ``Puffy'' Combs and Lil' Kim. ``They gave me the first half of the money, so I gotta get in the studio and finish their songs,'' she says with a laugh. ``Kim's album is due in August, and Puffy's somewhere around July.''

Ready to roll

A mid-July production start has also been set for A&E's ``Nero Wolfe: The Golden Spiders'' - with Timothy Hutton aboard as Wolfe's hard-working associate, Archie. Maury Chaykin has also been cast as the corpulent armchair sleuth formerly played by the late William Conrad.

A Hollywood tale

Tippi Hedren knows a thing or two about Hollywood shenanigans, having been in movies even before becoming famous with Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 ``The Birds.'' Thus, she says, she's gotten a very big kick out of making the just-wrapped ``The Storytellers'' feature, which shows Tinseltown - fangs and all.

``It's one of the most fun parts I've had,'' says the mother of Melanie Griffith. ``I play a script supervisor who's retired and now writing scripts herself.''

However, as the story goes, says Hedren, her character can't get any action on her scripts until her grandson starts fronting them as his own. The movie is set to be released by Seagal/Nasso Films, the company co-owned by Steven Seagal and presided over by Phil Goldfine.

On another front, Hedren still maintains her Shambala African game preserve, hidden in a Southern California canyon. Some 60 animals - lions, tigers and leopards, oh my - reside there presently.

And Tippi's pouring her energy into legislation she calls the Shambala Exotic Animal Protection Act to stop the breeding of such creatures for black-marketing as pets. A coalition is forming on the issue now, and ``we've been trying to get (Sen.) Barbara Boxer to sponsor the bill,'' she says.

With reports by Stephanie DuBois.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) ELLIOTT

(2) HUTTON