  I got you covered, babe! Cher (Jim Carrey) and Sonny (Tea Leoni) try to rob a bank disguised as the pop couple in Fun With Dick And Jane.
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NEW YORK -- There's a scene in the comedy Fun With Dick And Jane where Tea Leoni does something she says she'd never do in real life -- get Botoxed.
It's not an act of vanity in the movie. In Fun With Dick And Jane (which opens tomorrow), Jim Carrey plays an upwardly-mobile exec who faces bankruptcy after his company goes down in Enron-like flames.
Scrounging for every dime to pay bills, his wife Jane (Leoni) volunteers as a guinea pig for an experimental Botox derivative to paralyze facial wrinkles -- with disastrously lumpy results.
"Elisabeth Shue and I have a pact, that if we have a weak moment and start flirting with the Botox needle, we call each other. I don't honestly want cosmetic work because the idea makes me feel bad, and I can't imagine it doesn't make every other woman feel bad."
About to turn 40 on Feb. 25, the gregarious and funny Leoni -- who's married to ex-X-Files star David Duchovny -- is frank about where she's at in life. "I feel the sexiest I've ever felt," she says. "I'm better in bed, I'm smarter, I have children, there's this fullness. And what comes with it is that you can see in my face what I'm up to, and that I've been laughing a lot. I wouldn't trade it for the world. When I'm 60, can you imagine how smart and funny I'm going to be?" she says with a grin you might find in the dictionary next to the word "impish."
Always game for a laugh, Leoni starred in her own sitcom, The Naked Truth, from '95 to '98, and was keen to sign on to Fun With Dick And Jane. "It was a blast (working with Jim) and I think the reason is both of us tend to be physical when there's a banana peel involved."
As with the 1977 Jane Fonda/George Segal original, Fun With Dick And Jane's cash-strapped couple eventually turn to bank-robbing to finance their suburban American Dream. Here the slapstick gets into high gear, with Leoni pointing to a pratfall during a Starbucks robbery as her proudest moment. "When we had a scene like that, we'd take our time and fall over and over and over again. That move over the coffee counter is one of my best pieces of work.
"The first time I went over, it was extremely painful, but didn't look it. So I put some biscotti stacks there and took those down. But that didn't look nearly painful enough. Then I found these coffee thermoses. That was the key. So I set those up and still the biscotti. And I was in so much pain at that point, I really wanted it to be perfect. Like a bowling score. I love that fall."
Still, she says, "David is more funny, I think, than me. And Miller my (three-year-old) son. Oh we got trouble there. Please don't be an actor Miller, please God."
Leoni says Carrey was open to other ideas on the fly -- as when they rob a bank dressed as Sonny and Cher. "When I met with the costume designer and she was showing me Cher ideas, I turned to Jim and said, 'Y'know, you're the tall guy. Why don't you be Cher?' Jim is a beautiful man, but he is the most bizarre-looking transgenderish kind of... God, it was a freaky moment!
"But here's the embarrassing part. The costume designer went and got Sonny Bono's clothes, these museum pieces. So I picked one, and I s--- you not. It fit perfectly. You know how embarrassing that is? Some women go '36-24-36,' I go 'Sonny Bono' -- the length of the sleeves, the waist, the chest, the ass, everything."
Of said posterior, the almost-fortysomething says, "I used to work out for my ass, and now I work out for my heart. But I think the ass still benefits. David and I play a lot of tennis, and I do pilates, which I really like.
"Also, I do dye my hair. Somehow I find that's okay."
