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So, given that Torontonian Mike Myers' mega-hit Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me is a British spy spoof, does the same go for being a Powers woman?
"I think it's exciting to the male friends I know," admits Heather Graham, a.k.a. CIA agent Felicity Shagwell, in the Powers sequel.
"It's fun to play that kind of character and feel like you get to play a strong character and be sexually aggressive and not have to be demure," continues Graham, whose character is loosely based on Dr. No's Ursula Andress.
"In order to play that part they had to find out if I do indeed 'shag well,' and I do," she adds with a laugh.
But according to Graham, the happily-married Myers wasn't even the least bit tempted by her obvious physical charms.
"He's the least flirtatious guy I've ever worked with," she says. "He's so incredibly devoted to his wife. It's very romantic. It's just kind of funny that the man who makes the movie about the swinging guy is the most romantic (person). He's funny and keeps everyone laughing, but he's definitely not like a man of mystery who's charismatic in a James Bond sort of way."
Whatever you think of Shagwell -- she's no Vanessa Kensington as played by Elizabeth Hurley in the first Powers film and briefly in the second -- Graham is doing just fine on her own.
She was recently named the 1999 Star of Tomorrow at ShoWest, the national convention of theatre owners, and currently graces numerous magazine covers, including Entertainment Weekly as the new "It Girl."
"I dreamed that I would be able to be an actress and maybe be in some good movies," says Graham, whose credits include Lost In Space, Two Girls And A Guy, Boogie Nights and Drugstore Cowboy.
"So I think part of my mind thought it was possible and then there was another part where it seems impossible, so I had both. But it's only recently that I've really gotten these good opportunities. I think it's a mixture of luck and being ready."
Next for her are three more comedies -- Bowfinger, opposite Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy; the darkly humorous Committed, and Danny Boyle's Alien Love Triangle with Kenneth Branagh and Courteney Cox. The latter film is part of a trilogy with directors Kevin Smith (Dogma) and Gary Fleder (Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead) and features Graham in an unearthly disguise.
"I have a green bald head and pointy ears, and I wear black contact lenses and I have long fingers. It's kind of a crazy story. I think I'm almost unrecognizable," says Graham. "Courteney Cox plays my alien husband. She's a male alien in the body of a female. And she's a completely chauvinistic male, it turns out. So she's going, 'I can't wait to get my d--k back!' It's pretty funny."
Graham's personal life is also going well, despite her being estranged from her strict Irish Catholic family. She moved out of the house when she was 18 and away from her schoolteacher-children's book author mother, her FBI agent father and younger sister.
After some therapy in her early twenties and dating James Woods -- to name one -- Graham is involved with screenwriter-director-actor Ed Burns (The Brothers McMullen).
The two, who will likely work together in a period piece about cops that Burns is writing, live in a five-level Spanish house in the Hollywood Hills that Graham bought last summer. But there has been at least one ugly incident so far.
"This woman came to my house," explains Graham. "She's like, 'I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and does Heather Graham live here? She's from Milwaukee, and I heard you have a guest room and I really need a place to stay.'
"She's like, 'If you were a humanitarian, you'd let me stay.'"