.

"My hand was on my garage door," recalls Grier, when an L.A.P.D. officer appeared, told her to raise her hands and pointed his .44 Magnum at her.

"With my back turned, I told him that this was my house, but he got extremely angry at me and said I was lying. I did exactly what he told me to do -- spread my legs, kept my hands up.

"Sweat was coming down my back. I wanted to scratch but I knew if I did, I'd be a white chalk mark on the driveway."

A next-door neighbor finally confirmed Grier's identity, but the psychological damage was done. Months later she bought a ranch near Denver, and moved there for good.

Even better now: "The Denver-L.A. flight is cheaper than L.A. car insurance," she says.

Indeed, Grier hasn't abandoned the movie industry completely. She auditions here often.

As she did for Carpenter, who, in his love of irony, was thinking about hiring the sexy Grier to play an Escape From L.A. transsexual opposite Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken.

"I was nervous at that first meeting," she says. "There was, y'know, John Carpenter. I also had a stuffed sock down my leg."

Excuse me? "It's called method dressing."

Later, without the sock, when she won the part, "I hung out with guys in pool halls and bars. I noticed they screamed a lot, pounded tables and arm punched each other all the time.

"I hope I represented manhood really well," she says chuckling, referring to her fey-male performance.

Meanwhile, a more serious Grier confirms that she's still hard at work on a documentary about kids growing up in the gang-infested inner city of South Central.

"If I can help one kid by showing them the downfalls, it will be worth it," she says. "I know what it's like to be poor, wear second-hand clothes, eat sugar sandwiches and sell pot holders door-to-door."

Grier has escaped from a lot of things.


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