AND VADIM CREATED DE MORNAY

In two months, Rebecca De Mornay sets off for Santa Fe, N. M., to play the lead in a new version of “And God Created Woman,� the movie that turned Brigitte Bardot into a star 30 years ago in France.

Another reputation was made with the film, that of French director Roger Vadim, then in his 20s. Now, once again, he will be at the helm.

But those who expect a mere reprise of the story of the sexually repressed French heroine will be disappointed, according to De Mornay.

“In some ways I’m sorry they’re even using the same title,� she said this week. “Our story has nothing to do with the first film. It’s entirely different. This is an American love story set in New Mexico. But of course it was on the strength of the title that Vadim was able to promote interest in the project.�

De Mornay, 23, the blond actress who made her mark as the cool, glossy call girl in Paul Brickman’s 1983 hit “Risky Business,� saw the original Bardot movie when she was a schoolgirl in Kitzbuhel, Austria. She and her mother lived there for several years.

“I remember thinking it was terrific that Vadim had made it when he was only 26,� she said. “And like a lot of girls in their teens I wondered about him, this man who had loved and married so many beautiful women (among them: Bardot, Jane Fonda, Catherine Deneuve), so I was highly flattered when he chose me for this role. And when we met in New York earlier this year we got along very well.

“He wasn’t at all the kind of man I’d expected to meet. I found him very funny and warm. He makes me feel secure and I feel like I can trust him not to turn this into an exploitation film.�

Now, together with Vadim, De Mornay is working at reshaping the script.

“He asked me to do it and I was delighted. I’ve never before had the luck to learn the lead role and have so much advance time to get the script right.�

The fact that Vadim personally chose her for the part seems to have delighted and encouraged her.

“Often it’s such a battle to persuade a director that you are right for a part,� she said. “Andrei Konchalovsky didn’t even want to see me for ‘Runaway Train.’ He was convinced that the actress who played the hooker in ‘Risky Business’ couldn’t possibly be right for the role of Sara. So often people in the business of creating illusion are fooled by the very illusion they create. But I finally got in to see him wearing no makeup at all. And I got the part.�

She then went on to play the sweet young soldier’s wife in “The Trip to Bountiful� for which Geraldine Page, with whom she later studied, won an Oscar.

“What I want most of all,� De Mornay said, “is for no one ever to be able to say: ‘I know exactly who Rebecca De Mornay is.’ I want to be different each time.�

In a further effort to increase her range, last year she tried for an Off Broadway production of Sam Shepard’s “The Lie of the Mind.� But after six weeks of rehearsals she left the cast after differences with the author.

“I still want to do a play,� she said. “When I worked with George C. Scott on ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (which aired last Sunday on CBS), he said, ‘I think you’ve got it. So take it to the stage. And if you think you know the meaning of terror when that red light on the set goes on, try walking out on stage in front of a live audience. That’s throw-up-in-buckets terror.’ �

De Mornay, born in Santa Rosa, left for Europe with her mother after her stepfather died. She was then 5 and did not return to the United States until she was 18. She went to school first in Britain and then in Austria. She speaks fluent German and French.

“Because we moved around so much I was desperate to fit in,� she said, “so I’d adopt a local accent as soon as possible. I learned to speak German with a perfect Austrian accent. The same when I was in England. The children there used to mimic my American accent so I wound up speaking like a Cockney. I still had a bit of that accent left when I came back here to live.�

Since she had been been away for so long, America was in some ways like a foreign land to her.

“People would discuss some TV show that had been popular and I’d have absolutely no idea what they were talking about. But I’ve never regretted going to Europe. It was a great learning experience. I’m very American in the way I look at things but I do know there’s another world out there. . . . “