SHE'S STILL ON THE WRIGHT TRACK : CHOOSY ACTRESS JOINS HUSBAND PENN IN QUEST FOR DEMANDING FILM ROLES, AND SHE FINDS ONE IN `MOLL FLANDERS'.

Byline: Matthew Gilbert Boston Globe

If human energy were measured on a Richter scale, today Robin Wright would register a 2, maybe a 3. Hours of interviews have left the 29-year-old actress dazed, confused, bothered, bewildered and even more peaked than usual. Squashing yawns and letting her sentences quietly derail, she is the antithesis of the active, headstrong characters from her small group of movies, including ``The Playboys,'' ``Forrest Gump'' and now ``Moll Flanders,'' which opens today. This afternoon, half a cigarette smoked and stubbed out in her empty hotel glass, Hollywood's choosiest young actress and the new Mrs. Sean Penn is a living, breathing advertisement for Geritol. ``Fried'' is the word she prefers.

``I just want to promote the film, you know,'' she says, aware that ``Moll Flanders,'' a quality costume drama based on Daniel Defoe's classic novel, will not sell itself, especially in the shadow of summer biggies like ``Mission: Impossible'' and ``Twister.'' Indeed, Wright's drive to promote her first star vehicle is what has pried her from the West Coast exactly seven days after her star-studded Malibu wedding to the father of her two children, the actor-director-tough-guy Penn. Wright is fried and somewhat frazzled, but there is nevertheless a major glistening clarity emanating from her left hand, third finger, which she manages to wave about with some last vestiges of strength.

Although she and Penn live close by Hollywood, Wright's passion for career moving and shaking is, like her energy level today, at the low end of the scale. Notoriously, Wright has turned down roles in some of the most commercial movies of all time, including ``Batman Forever,'' ``Jurassic Park,'' ``Born on the Fourth of July'' and ``The Firm.'' She also withdrew from ``Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves'' in 1990, when she learned she was pregnant with Penn's child. Many of the roles she has decided to accept between her two box-office hits, ``The Princess Bride'' and ``Forrest Gump,'' have been in high-integrity, low-visibility independent movies like ``State of Grace,'' ``The Playboys'' and ``The Crossing Guard,'' which was directed by Penn.

``I've started to hear, `Well, people think you don't want to work because you turn everything down,' '' Wright says. ``It's like, `Give me the gun!' because it has nothing to do with that. It's just finding the proper material. And another factor is if it's shooting at a time of year when I'm able to work. My kids are starting school.''

Wright says she rarely finds scripts like ``Moll Flanders'' that feature leading women with independent spirit and dimension. In ``Moll Flanders,'' she plays an iron-willed orphan who makes her way through the hardships of 18th-century England, with help from Morgan Freeman's servant and Stockard Channing's madam. ``You know within 10 pages of a script if you can give something to it, if there's meat,'' she says.

Right after ``Gump,'' Wright was dubbed ``the flavor of the month,'' and the offers started pouring in. ``They say, `Don't you want to become a superstar?' '' she says. ``It's like cattle, they want to distribute you into a category. And it's frustrating at times because you don't want to have to put your head in that mode of thinking.''

She says she and Penn support each other as Hollywood outlaws, saying, ``Do what you believe in and that will come across.''

Not surprisingly, Wright prefers to avoid the subject of her husband and their marriage. During their eight-year rocky relationship, which officially began after they co-starred in ``State of Grace,'' their unconventionality has been a source of unending fascination to the press, with Penn cast as the boozing, womanizing cowboy and Wright as his loyal cowgirl waiting back at the farm.

``This is tedium anyway, and to have that added pressure - which has nothing to do with the movie - just makes it more exhausting,'' Wright says about having to dodge the subject of Sean.

Now that they are married, she says, all the attention feels less troublesome. ``It feels like we've been through all the hell, and now we actually get to have fun. And have a happy life.'' She says she values the way they can lean on each other: ``The respect is there. It gives you a nice base. When you get down on yourself, that gets you up.''

She says the family - which includes daughter Dylan, 5, and son Hopper, 2 - will be moving away from Hollywood, the players' playground. ``It's old. We don't want to raise our kids there. And being surrounded by everyone in the business becomes so incestuous after a while. We're looking for places in Northern California right now. We want to have a little variety, open a general store or something.'' A carjacking incident that occurred in her driveway after this interview surely has not weakened her resolve to leave L.A. She and her two children were ordered out of the car by two armed teen-agers.

These days, Wright is sporting a significantly new hairstyle, thanks to the excessive bleaching and perming for ``Moll Flanders.'' Her familiar long-haired California-blonde image is gone, and she wears an earthy brown shag that makes her look nearly unrecognizable, kind of like a cousin to Jessica Lange. It's a look that doesn't remind you that she began her career at 14 as a model; it's also a look that may help win her parts she truly desires. For, of all the roles in the world, the role Robin Wright most wishes she'd gotten was Debra Winger's turn as a tormented truth teller in ``A Dangerous Woman.'' ``She was phenomenal,'' says Wright, ``but it was that kind of thing where in Hollywood they said, `You don't get it because you're too pretty.'

``It's silly!''

If there's one word to describe the character of Moll Flanders, it would not be ``pretty.'' Maybe it would be ``survivor,'' maybe it would be ``stubborn.'' It's a juicy role, and none of the other actors in the film, including Freeman and Channing, is as central to the plot. John Watson, one of the producers of ``Moll Flanders,'' says that Wright ``wouldn't have been on the list'' of potential stars for his $14.5 million film had it not been for ``Forrest Gump.'' Wright's supporting role as Gump's true love in the third-highest-grossing film in America was an entirely accidental career boost.

She says she was ``dumbfounded'' by that movie's success, and got in the habit of calling ``Gump'' director Robert Zemeckis' phone machine to imitate a singing cash register: ``ching ching, ching ching.''

Wright is hoping that ``Moll Flanders'' will find its audience, even if that amounts to a fraction of the numbers who turned out for ``Forrest Gump.'' ``It's a woman's story, and it's her feat,'' she says. ``And because it's guided toward women and mothers, it is a limited audience. But I hope that everybody sees that regardless of gender, it's about the spirit of a person, and the conviction of their belief, no matter what or who it is.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Robin Wright trips the light ro mantic in `Moll Franders'

(2)Propelled higher in the Hollywood pantheon by her part in the megahit ``Forrest Gump,'' Robin Wright won the role of an 18th-century English orphan in ``Moll Flanders.''