Odd Woman Out

Attraction is an important part of getting the job done, according to Young. ''You balance the sexual energy with the work,'' she explains. ''And if you can't find a way to be attracted, you find some way of channeling that energy into what you are trying to do, even if it's getting the catering guy down the hall to stand next to the camera.''

That seems to have been the thinking behind Young's offer to pay a dolly grip $5,000 to stand in for her Love Crimes costar, Patrick Bergin, when she could not get motivated for a key love scene. The story that filtered back from the set in Atlanta about her unusual proposition was vintage Young: outrageous, provocative, and, apparently, more than a little desperate. ''The thing with the dolly grip was an attempt to put some control over something she felt nervous about,'' says Love Crimes director Lizzie Borden, explaining the offer was partially a joke.

''That nightmare night,'' recalls Young. ''I didn't feel like being naked, I didn't feel like making out, I just didn't feel like it. In hindsight, I was uncomfortable because I was exposing myself for a movie I didn't have any confidence in. It's a much worse experience to be in a movie that's no good if my body's plastered all over it.''

Young's lack of confidence had to do not only with the film's extensive nude scenes, but also the fact that its ending had been a point of contention throughout the shoot. Borden, who was born Linda but let the high-school nickname Lizzie stick, gave us a feminist look at prostitution in 1987's Working Girls, and she first wanted Young's character to take revenge on Bergin's by sodomizing him. But the actors and the producers talked her out of it. An ending was shot in which Young's DA character reduces Bergin's criminal to tears, but Borden never planned to use it; she wrapped her film hoping to find her conclusion in the editing.

When it became clear that this wasn't going to happen, writer Kit Carson, the troubleshooter on Paris, Texas, was brought in to help Borden straighten out the story. Carson wrote and directed a flashback sequence of Young's character as an abused child and a more violent final confrontation between the leads. But three weeks before the film's release, Borden was filming yet another denouement. Though Young is pleased with the changes made in the film, she is surprised that the love scene she found so difficult to shoot didn't make it into the final cut, and says the whole experience was not an easy one: ''It was a real lesson to me about ever agreeing to do a script where the ending wasn't totally set down.''

Love Crimes served its purpose, though, as a catharsis for its star. ''One of the reasons I agreed to take the role was to unload a lot of anger I had at being publicly harassed,'' Young says. ''It was a great place to do it, too.''

Borden agrees: ''Sean can identify with a woman who goes over the edge and then is attacked by society and culture, even though she feels that she is the one telling the truth.''

It's late afternoon in Sedona, and the heat is letting up. Young decides it's time to dance, so she heads to the auditorium of the local school, where she and Lujan had their wedding reception. Pulling off her little green sneakers and lacing up a pair of white tap shoes, she jumps up and immediately starts making happy noises with her feet. Her thigh muscles are flexing in their own furious dance as she goes through the quick, repetitive movements. ''Because of the incredible reputation I have, people find me exciting to watch on film,'' she says, her eyes fixed on the back of the darkened room. ''But the unpredictability of how I perform doesn't mean that I am crazy, or that I am mean, and it doesn't mean that I don't have shy moments.'' She twirls around.

''I like living in the desert, and now because I don't show up in Hollywood, people think I am really scary, and it's hilarious,'' she says. ''I hope they continue to say I'm fierce and Catwomanish, you know — how wonderful. Right now I'm trying to think of the next thing I can bubble up into the press, something to keep the paparazzi waiting breathlessly.'' With a faraway smile, Sean Young takes flight across the stage.