She's reinvented herself as a Hollywood golden girl, but rock chick Courtney Love still loves to set tongues wagging

Courtney Love may have gone all Hollywood, with her designer make over and film roles, but rock 'n' roll's wild woman is still a bad girl at heart.

"yeah, I'm a bit bad," says Courtney, 35. "You get in front of all that teenage angst and you respond to it. As long as it's in me, I'll do it. When I fake it, I won't."

And, as if to underscore the point, she lights up a cigarette in a strictly smoke-free Los Angeles hotel, ignoring a few polite suggestions that perhaps she should not. "If I was on the A-list you wouldn't say anything," she shrugs at the disapprovers. "Give me a break. I just need a few hits. I'm allowed to have one bad thing I do, alright?"

Wearing a low cut black dress which freely displays both cleavage and tattoos, Courtney is currently doing the publicity rounds for Man on the Moon, director Milos Forman's biographical movie about comedian and performance artist Andy Kaufman. But while Courtney is content for now to play the Hollywood game, she makes it clear that there are times when she is not comfortable as part of the team.

Since The People Vs Larry Flynt launched her into the big budget arena three years ago, she has had occasion to rub shoulder pads with some of Hollywood's most beautiful "suits" - but she hasn't always been impressed.

"There was one studio head - he's fired now - I almost beat him up," she says. "Boy, he was so nasty, this guy. He was just mean about everybody. He was a mean, mean old cuss. They shouldn't send me, because I'm too mouthy."

The enigmatic musician and actress, who was born into a self described dysfunctional family as Love Michelle Harrison, and spent parts of her youth in a teepee and reform schools, patiently - if not always happily - deflects most questions about her personal life.

"I never have (talked about my personal life). I never do," she says curtly, but then goes on to offer an insight into the life of her eight year old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, whose father, the Seattle grunge king Kurt Cobain, committed suicide in 1994. "She goes to school where there are no famous kids, so she's really in, like, the cool school,"Courtney says. "And my daughter isn't me. She doesn't live in a teepee. She's a natural blonde. She's perfect in every way and it's a totally different life that she has for herself."

Following her Golden Globe nomination role in The People Vs Larry Flynt, Courtney's acting career and profile revved up. She's since had parts in Basquait and 200 Cigarettes, and is currently filming Beat opposite Kiefer Sutherland. She's even just set up her own production company, Epitome Productions, with her friend Janet Billig.

"I want to direct," she suddenly announces. "I'd probably be very good at it. That's what I'm going to end up doing. I'm very, very committed to making films, not just for me, by the way. The first two projects we've sold I'm not even in. But I think - no, I know - that we can make films about women that are juicy and fun, like Thelma and Lousise and The First Wives Club."

In Man on the Moon, Courtney plays Lynne Margulies opposite Jim Carrey's Andy Kaufman, who died of lung cancer in May 1984 at the age of 35. Best known as Latka Gravas on the TV sitcom Taxi, Kaufman's live appearances were said to push comedy to the edge. He was also self declared inter gender wrestling champion of the world, having wrestled more than 200 women.

"I felt like I was working with Jim Carrey channeling Andy Kaufman," Courtney says. "The first thing that bothered me about him was that he was popular in high school, which freaked me out because I had this whole thing about if you were popular in high school I can't possibly relate to you."

"But he's got so much genius going on in him. Here's a guy who's had one of the most successful careers in the history of cinema, in mass entertainment comedy, and the fact that he has such a deep reserve, a deep well of soul and darkness in his history really shows up in this film. I have a huge amount of respect for comedians, but they all seem to suffer from the sad clown syndrome. Every one of them I know has been pretty depressed or had some deep, dark sides."