BEVERLY HILLS -- Alicia Silverstone has lost her battle with the Hollywood image machine.

Back in 1996 when she had just turned 20, Silverstone was cast as Batgirl in Batman & Robin.

The latest Hollywood IT girl was full-faced and full-figured and suffered cruel jibes -- and not just from the gossip press.

Studio heads, producers and directors hounded her to lose weight and become another of the rail-thin ingenues.

She lost the youth leads in My Father the Hero and Romeo + Juliet so Silverstone certainly had strong motivation.

She held out through her Blast from the Past, Love's Labour's Lost and Excess Baggage days before getting the message.

The film offers dried up so Silverstone conformed. Today she is as wispy as Sarah Jessica Parker, though not quite in the Lara Flynn Boyle camp just yet.

"I'm eating so healthy since I became a vegan," is all Silverstone will offer as an explanation for her image transformation. She also claims to enjoy the direction and pace of her career.

In 2003, she tried her hand as a TV sitcom star with the series Miss Match, but it was not renewed for a second season.

She had a supporting role as a nasty journalist in Scooby-Doo Monsters Unleashed, a far cry from the days she produced her own films and had a three-picture deal with Sony that netted her $10 million US.

"It's not the size of the role I take or the success of the box-office success of a movie that excites me but the experience of making it," says Silverstone.

"When I made Love's Labour's Lost, I was in heaven. It was an incredible experience.

"Everywhere I went to promote the film in Europe, people stood up and applauded. People left the theatres singing and dancing. I don't think anyone saw it in America.

"It was barely released, but I still consider it the best work I've done on film."

What has excited her almost as much was her nine-month run opposite Kathleen Turner and Jason Biggs in the Broadway version of The Graduate. "I want to be back on stage. I miss it so very much. I'm waiting for that call."

Waiting, but not idle.

Silverstone has already struck a deal to develop a new TV series called Queen Bee. "Danny De Vito is directing the pilot and will star in it. I play a girl who was really popular in high school and college. Everyone called her the Queen Bee. Now she learns that Queen Bee stood for Queen Bitch. She tries to change, but it's not that easy."

She says she was alternately popular and an outsider as she went through school. "The greatest lesson I've learned is that you have to do things for yourself, or you'll feel deflated."

This is what her character in the comedy Beauty Shop has to learn. In the Queen Latifah comedy, Silverstone plays Lynn, the only white hairstylist in an black beauty salon.