THE LAST LAUGH Then she was the recovering heroin addict, devestated by the death of her rock-star husband. Now she's a successful actress with the world and its director bashing down her door. Sky spends four and a half hours with Courtney Love. You'd think Courtney Love had seen it all. But today, things are about to take a turn for the worse, even by her standards. Los Angeles' Four Seasons Hotel is swarming with journalists, probably more than Love has ever seen. And, needless to say, enough journalists to stretch more than a mile isn't a sight high up on Love's roster of Really Nice Things.    Courtney Love's list of Really Nice Things is currently:    1) Frances Bean, her daughter and inevitable top priority.    2) The People Versus Larry Flynt, her new film (about the founder of porno mag Hustler) from which have ensued flagship fashion spreads in Vogue and the alleged emergence of The New Courtney™.    3) Milos Forman, the film's revered Czech director whose films include One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus. He put up alot of money to ensure the film got made and that Courtney was in it.    4) Woody Harrelson, her Flynt co-star, who also put up part of the bond and has become mentor, friend and provider of yoga teachers.    5) Edward Norton, also in the film, who may or may not be her boyfriend, but is nonetheless, she says, a great friend and inspiration.    The media is here as part of a week-long press junket to promote The People Versus Larry Flynt. Time constraints dictate that journalists interview each star in groups of about eight and usually round a table, hence the term "round table" interview. Then a publicist comes to escort the star to the next table which is usually in the next hotel suite.    So, what were we expecting? Is the US press was to be believed we were about to see The New Courtney™, the one with brown hair and designer clothes. Smeared lipstick and dark roots were out, darling. A New Woman. A story (apparently bogus) had even been doing the rounds that Love was sending out headshots of her self to producers planning a remake of Breakfast At Tiffany's. Despite the New Courtney hype, I was anticipating a feisty, aggressive woman, the same one who has, in the past, eaten journalists for breakfast.    So we wait until she finishes her first group and we spot her in the corridor with Woody Harrelson in tow. He wasn't doing interviews and, even if he was, he wouldn't have been doing them with Love (you only interview the Talent, as they're called, seperately). She is so terrified of us, it transpires, that Woody had to come to hold her hand. Literally.    And, finally, she enters the room alone. She's blonde again. Not brassy, but an expensive-looking darker blonde. Dark grey eyeshadow highlights her green eyes. Her lipstick is sheer, glossy, and barely there. Her must-be-designer black dress is low cut. If there's such a thing as classy cleavage, she has it. Her stilettos are perilously high, making her model-tall.    "Are you going to die if I smoke?" she asks, a bit shakily. "And please could I have some coffee with a little milk and one sugar?"    An Italian journalist had slipped into our group at the last minute. There was no room for her at our table so we had all hoped she'd move to another group, but she sat away from the table, behind the Talent's designer chair. Said journalist is disliked more for her habit of monopolising interviews than for behaving obnoxiously but, to our detriment, she does the latter, starting before Courtney has even entered the room. "So who is going to ask about Kurt Cobain?" she demands. We do our best to ignore her but she tries again. After some inter-group bickering a Danish girl finally silences her with a response indicative of how we all feel: "We didn't realise Kurt was in the film."    As soon as Courtney sits down and before she's even had a sip of coffee, the woman scoots round so she is directly opposite her and without even a cursory hello blurts out: "So it seems that you were able to bring some of your own background to this character?" Slightly taken aback, Love says: "I don't think that I brought my background so much as I brought myself."    "OK," continues the Italian, who clearly hasn't registered the retort. "I wondered how you related to some aspects of Althea that may or may not be also part of your life. I believe you were a stripper." Courtney cuts her off, barely even raising her voice. "You know what, don't even start." Love stands up and walks out...    Great. The rest of the group round on the Italian. Though no one wanted her in our group, we didn't imgaine she'd be quite so damaging. Phrased in the right manner, the question could have been a legitimate one. Althea Leasure, the character Love plays in The People Versus Larry Flynt, worked as a stripper at one of Larry Flynt's clubs long before he launched Hustler, the first magazine in his porn empire. And it has certainly been written that Love herself once worked as a stripper.    After ten tense minutes, Love is persuaded to re-emerge, accompanied by three film-studio publicists. "OK, let's start again. None of that shit and I'll be happy. But you know, I really want some coffee." We breathe a collective sigh of relief but are terrified into submission so I break the ice, telling Love her performance is every bit as phenomenal as rumour has it. She smiles and says: "Oh, thank you, that is so nice. I had such low expectations." Unbelievably, Courtney Love thought we, the tremulous press posse, would eat her performance for breakfast.    I start by asking what it's like for rock's enfant terrible to garner such accolades from an entirely different - and very critical - industry. She lights a Marlboro. "Oh, it's huge. It's very large because it's kind of like getting an 'A' in class. Making a movie, you'd get a 'C' if you were lucky. I mean, grown-ups are being nice to me, mature individuals compared with what I'm used to." (She resists flashing a scowl at the Italian.) "It's kinda not very punk, but it's very cool. So I have to adjust to it."    Oddly, she hasn't recieved universal support from her music industry friends. Perhaps they fear losing her to acting. "No, they're not encouraging me," she smiles ruefully. "A lot of my friends rate acting very low, to the point that you almost start to believe that it's just a case of saying someone else's words and that's about it. It's not creative and it's not passionate, even though everybody I know who's a musician totally admires great performances. But actually going into it and engaging in an actual role, you find a lot of passion."    Love fought off strong competition for the part from many of the A-list crowd but ultimately won out over two actresses in serious contentation - British rising star Georgina Cates and Australian Rachel Griffith, best known as the friend in Muriel's Wedding. Director Milos Foreman showed screen tests of the three to one of his most trusted (and bizarre) advisors: Vaclev Havel, the Czech Republic's long-time leader. Neither Foreman nor Havel knew who Courtney Love was, but both agreed on her incredible natural aptitude for the job. As Woody Harrelson had told us earlier: "The others were skilled actresses, but there's something in Courtney's soul and heart that you just can't act."    Having selected Love for the role, everyone involved faced a hurdle they hadn't anticipated; the insurance bond. Without insurance, the studio would not have sanctioned her casting. To get insurance the studio had to prove that she was clean of drug addiction. Her only option was weekly drug tests. At first she "got kind of mad for a second. I thought 'Well, you know, I'm not even doing it.' Then people said, 'It's Milos Forman. Just do it. Just, you know, pee in a cup, give hair follicles. Whatever they need.'" And pee in a cup she did, every single week. It goes without saying that the result ensured the bond was returned in full on completion of shooting. "They'll never do it to me ever again," she says, able to laugh about it now.    The first day, like any new job, was the worst. Even though she had made films before - Sid And Nancy and Feeling Minnesota - those parts were small fry compared with a lead. Nerves got the better of her and she "kept hitting mikes, lights and crew members and laughing at Woody's lines."    First-day nerves conquered, Love faced the challenge of filming Althea's gruelling death scene. She was dreading it. Not only was she naked, her body had to look ravaged by drugs and AIDS.    This entailed a crash three-week "really gross" diet. "It works so fast and all the trainers told me in secrecy, so now I'm telling the world. It's basically no carbohydrates (potatoes, pasta, stodgy stuff) whatsoever. My big treat was diet sugar-free jelly. But it works. I'm just starting to do it again."    She had fought against doing nude scenes elsewhere in the film, but relented, appreciating that "it was kind of hypocritical of me. I mean, it's a film about porn. I'm supposed to say those scenes were really terrible but I mean, I have hippie parents."    Love can't quite take the commendations about her performance seriously. The way she tells it, she feels like a big fraud about to be exposed.    "Really, you should come into my head when I'm hearing this stuff." She is modest in the extreme. "You have no idea how surprised I am that you are reacting so positively. If I seem a little touchy, it's just because I'm shocked."    Though the real Larry Flynt spent hours with Love discussing his wife, he has found it difficult to express what it's like seeing her reborn through Love's interpretation. "I think he knew that I would do what I could, at least on a spiritual level, to honour her and her sweetness."    In fact, the biggest compliment he paid Love was to tell her she and Althea would have really got on. Love remains close to Flynt. Recently, when compromising pictures of Love and Stone Temple Pilot's Scott Weiland surfaced in the marketplace, he allegedly paid a huge sum to buy and destroy them.    She calls the New Courtney tag "a good by-line," but is offended by the inference that she had to change rather than grow or mature.    "In the film, you see me in a different way than you do just going to see my band's shows, so people come out a bit and say, 'Well, she's not really like what I thought, therefore she must be different.' That makes me a little pissed-off in a strange sort of way, given what I've had to endure. But poor me, it's life. It's OK, it's OK." She still doesn't sound convinced.    Earlier, while waiting for Love, we had jokingly discussed who would ask about her breasts which look incredible on screen, underwater and otherwise. In a recent interview, she had admitted to having them "lifted" but none of us were quite sured what this constituted.    Eventually we admitted a Brazilian guy into our exclusively- female group on one condition: that he would ask the breast question. We didn't think he actually would. When he did, Love threw back her head and laughed harder than she had during the entire interview.    "Why would I answer that? God! Once is enough." We are all laughing with her and suddenly there's a good mood. The Brazilian shrugs and says: "Well, Brazilians don't care about breasts anyway." Without pausing for breath she shoots back: "Oh yeah, sure, I've seen your press!"    Love certainly intends to make more films and says the quality of scripts her agent is being sent has improved immeasurably. In the meantime, she is busy writing Hole's next album, to be called Celebrity Skin. Flynt has been a voyage of discovery for Love, one which has had such a profound effect on her that it will reverberate through-out her life, even in her songwriting. "I feel a little calmer, so when I'm writing songs I can be more to the point. I can get across more of the things I'm dealin with." She is also a practising Buddhist, crediting the religion with "clearing my head".    These days, Hollywood and the film community is welcoming her with open arms, inviting her to its most elite and prestigious events. Sharon Stone lent her a dress for the Golden Globes and she attended the premiere of The English Patient holding hands with Michael Stipe, still one of her closest friends. She liked it so much she's just finished the book and went to see the film again.    I ask her what else she is reading and she grins. "I've just read a Martha Stewart book," she sais teasingly.    Stewart is America's unofficial home and gardening guru, so Love reading a Martha Stewart book is as unlikely as the Spice Girls professing a passion for crochet. But it gets better. "We met in Lodon, totally got along and she took me to the Chelsea Flower Show."    And with that, she leaves laughing and, I hope, believing in her acting talent a little more and despising journalists a little less. Later, I'm not surprised to discover our group was the one Love enjoyed most. Even the Italian woman is wracked with guilt and a new respect for our subject. She apologises profusely. Love won't hear it.    As she gets up from the table she says good-bye. "Hey, thanks guys. Oh, and remember..." All eyes turn to her. "Don't screw me, don't twist my words, don't lie!" All said in the sweetest possible way... The Courtney Love Story 1965 Courtney Love born to Hank Harrison, a Grateful Dead roadie, and heiress Linda Carroll. The couple divorce when she is five, and she's sent to boarding school. 1977 Sent to reform school for smuggling a bottle of vodka into junior high school. 1981 Becomes a stripper - an occupation which, along with her trust fund, supports her over the next ten years. 1985 Auditions for Alex Cox's SID AND NANCY. Cast as an extra but lands lead in Cox's next movie STRAIGHT TO HELL. 1989 Courtney fronts Hole. Originally based in LA, they relocate to Seattle. 1991 Debut album PRETTY ON THE INSIDE is released. 1992, February Marries Kurt Cobain in Hawaii. Love described Cobain as "her prince on a goddamn white horse." He proclaimed Love to be "the greatest fuck in the world." August 18 Frances Bean Cobain is born. "Angel Cake on earth," Love says. September VANITY FAIR claims Love took heroin while pregnant. Welfare authorities place Frances Bean in the temporary custody of Love's sister. 1994, April 8 Kurt Cobain's body discovered at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard, Madrona Park, Seattle. Courtney reads his suicide note to fans at a memorial. May Second album LIVE THROUGH THIS released. August Hole play Reading Festival. The crowd's reaction, according to Love, was "goddess worship on the verge of stoning me to death." 1995 Fined $500 for offensive behaviour on aeroplane during Hole's Australian tour, Courtney also gains a reputation for posting abusive threats on the Internet. 1996 Appears in FEELING MINNESOTA, starring Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz. 1997 Appears in THE PEOPLE VERSUS LARRY FLYNT as Althea, a heroin addict who dies of AIDS. - Emma Hinton, Sky, March, 1997 - - - - - - - - - - - - -