ACTRESSES FIND GREENER PASTURES

NO ACTRESS has yet topped the $12.5 million salary that Demi Moore is getting to take it off in Striptease -- but Moore's competition is inching ever closer. When New Line was looking to cast the role of Agnes von Kurowsky, the World War I nurse who has an affair with Ernest Hemingway (Chris O'Donnell) in Richard Attenborough's In Love and War, based on the true story behind A Farewell to Arms, the studio gave hard thought to Julia Roberts' $12 million asking price. But New Line Productions chairman Sara Risher decided she could go cheaper and persuaded Sandra Bullock to sign on for a piddling $10.5 million or 12.5 percent of the gross (whichever number is higher), a jump from her reported $8 million fee for A Time to Kill. Attenborough hopes to extend Bullock's range: ''Sandra used her attractive and bewitching private personality for The Net and While You Were Sleeping,'' he effuses, ''but that is just the surface. She's a smashing actress.'' Her paycheck, which will eat up almost a third of the budget for the film -- set to start production this spring -- is ''quite substantial,'' admits Attenborough, ''but Sandra has carried three pictures to $10 million openings -- that's a wonderful start.'' Meanwhile, Roberts isn't crying -- it's said she'll pocket $12 million for TriStar's comedy My Best Friend's Wedding.