THE LOVES OF AMY IRVING

the skylight onto her auburn hair. Kismet. Anybody else, it would have

been pigeons.

Irving, at least outwardly, is a princess in a bicoastal fairy tale.

If, as she insists, the rumors of trouble in her marriage are unfounded,

she is happily-ever-aftering with hundred-millionaire Steven Spielberg

and their precocious blond baby Max. Professionally, she's winning

overdue acclaim for breakthrough performances in "Delancey" and the

off-Broadway drama "The Road to Mecca." But mainly, she is Mommy to the

Max.

The limo glides over potholes, smooth as a magic pumpkin. "One thing

I know I am is a good mother," says Irving, just back from London, where

Spielberg's making "Indiana Jones -- The Last Crusade." "Max has been

traveling with me since he was 2 weeks old. So I don't feel he has an

absentee mother. I think I'm suffering more ... I've had a very creative

year. I've loved the work I've done. And I feel really full. It's been

six or seven weeks since I've worked. And my having full days with Max

is just more joy than any project has ever, ever brought me."

Asked if he's 4 yet, she is incredulous, huffy even. "No, 3 -- June

1985, '86, '87, '88," she ticks off. "How could he be 4? It was such a

press event there's no sense in my lying about his age. I remember when

one of the TV stations called and asked me, 'When you go into labor,

will you let us know so we can bring a TV camera over to the hospital?'

'Yeah, sure. Exactly what I plan to do. You'll be the first one I call.'

"

Max is Irving's pet topic. "He is the cutest thing. A really loving,

affectionate boy ... I get so many hugs and kisses ... He's so smart. He

just reasons with us about everything. We have to put him to bed about

40 minutes before we actually want him to go. 'I have to have my snack.

And I have to have my juice. And I better go brush my teeth because I

ate candy today, Mommy.'

"He's the best, the most wonderful child. Now, he's starting to

understand that Daddy makes the Indiana Jones movies. He loves Indiana

Jones ... The concept was hard to understand. 'Why does Daddy have to go

to work?' And now that he understands that Daddy's making those movies

-- it's 'Somebody's gotta do it.'

"When we were in London, 'Anastasia' {her TV special} was just

playing and there was a clip of me and I was crying, and he fell apart.

It was like, 'Mommy, don't cry.' It was so sad. So I made sure he just

doesn't see anything that's going to upset him like that so he doesn't

worry about me." Sweetness and Light

Amy Irving folded her arms and waited offcamera as talk show host

Regis Philbin woke up his morning show audience. Philbin hadn't noticed

a grape skin on his tooth. The crowd was convulsed when his saucy

cohostess teased him about it.

"I don't know about you," Irving said, "but this is too much fun for

me."

She made room for a stagehand with a cartful of cream pies for Soupy

Sales. The clowning had to wait, however. Irving had been moved up so

she wouldn't miss her chopper back to the Hamptons with Spielberg. The

couple overnighted in their Trump Tower pied-a`-terre following the

party-premiere of her romantic comedy.

To Irving's dismay, Philbin started telling a Spielberg anecdote.

"I'm sorry he told that story," she whispered. "I was hoping to tell it,

to stay away from my personal life." But not to worry -- Philbin makes

Barbara Walters look like Morton Downey.

"You do have the bluest eyes," he oozed. "They mesmerize."

(Bert the Makeup Man earlier had eschewed liner and barely brushed

mascara on her lashes. "She's a natural. It would be a shame to paint

her. It's like a house you go in, you wouldn't change a thing. You

wouldn't even move the furniture.")

After the ordeal, Irving breakfasts on decaf, bottled water and

strawberries. A spartan eater. "I've had times when I was a very

indulgent person. I used to drink a lot. Well, not a lot. I used to

drink coffee ... There are certain things I gave up with the pregnancy

that I just kept on. I haven't eaten sugar since Max was born," she

says.

Thin as a whippet, she jogs away the calories, most recently in

London with Harrison Ford. "So much of Central Park smells like dog

poop. I'm spoiled by the places I've run ... Where I live in L.A., I'm

right next to Will Rogers State Park. Central Park, I don't get that

same joy."

She got into shape this summer for a demanding role in Athol

Fugard's "The Road to Mecca." "When you take your clothes off on stage

eight times a week, you tend not to eat at all. You just don't want to

have to worry about it."

Weary of playing sweet young things, the 35-year-old Irving reveled

in showing her range as an embittered South African schoolteacher. After

a night of screaming and sobbing and tearing her hair, she was

squeeze-dried inside. "That woman felt deep pain. She also had deep

rage. Parts don't get any better than that ... It was the highlight of

my professional life ... the culmination of every dream I've had. Now I

have to have some real life and work up some new ones," she says.

"For me, working with Athol Fugard on the role was so demanding, just

so rich, so difficult and so much fun at the same time ... When Athol

had a birthday, Yvonne Bryceland and I got him a professional stripper.

It was, 'What's the complete opposite of what we're doing here?'

"It was great because we do a lot of candle lighting in the play,

and when she took off her top she had two little candles attached to her

nipples, which she lit and the lights all went out and she did a whole

'Happy Birthday.'" She giggles.

Crossing the Rubicon

Spielberg was shooting "Empire of the Sun" in Spain and Irving was

"location wifing" when director Joan Micklin Silver approached her about

starring in "Crossing Delancey." The two women went to Warner's (whose

CEO Steve Ross is a close friend of the Spielbergs) and offered the

studio a package deal. It accepted.

"The main appeal of working on this film ... was working with Joan

... She really invited me to participate more than anyone has ever

invited me to ... I wasn't just a hired hand. Even postproduction,

Warners was sending me posters to approve, and they were sending me the

trailer ... It was very flattering. It made me feel like I was in the

big time, you know," she says, modest as the nice Jewish virgin she

played in "Yentl."

In "Delancey," she's nice and Jewish -- Irving herself is

half-Jewish and was brought up as a Christian Scientist -- but she's

been around. As Izzy, a bookstore manager, she is caught between

independence and family tradition. She thinks she's happy being single,

but her granny decides she'd be happier married. To Izzy's horror, her

grandmother hires a matchmaker who fixes her up with the kindhearted

owner of a pickle stand. Inevitably Izzy realizes she's lonely, one

among many unhappy single urbanites.

Despite her nuclear family, Irving identifies. "There was a time I

was a single woman. I remember when the soup for one came out and how

embarrassing it would be to buy it. So you would buy the big can and

just eat it all or save it. Part of me really liked being single, but I

wanted children and a real relationship.

"I like it that Izzy falls on her face, makes mistakes. It was such

a realistic romance as opposed to a Hollywood flashy romance ... I was

very pleased when I came out of 'Moonstruck.' I left it feeling so good.

I said, 'I like this movie.' I think we just made one of those. I think

I'm very much a realistic romantic. I have dreams but they're rooted. I

don't have dreams that aren't attainable." Special Affection

Brian De Palma, Max's godfather, introduced the Spielbergs at a

dinner party in 1976. She was about to debut as the sole survivor in

"Carrie" and he was incubating "Star Wars." They became engaged, but

Irving reportedly broke it off en route to their wedding in 1980. She

felt overshadowed, she said, and got away from Hollywood, escaping to

Santa Fe. (She denies she rebounded with Willie Nelson on the set of

"Honeysuckle Rose.")

"It was a turning point in my life. I realized what I missed was the

stage. I had it in my blood. And so I did a nine-month run of 'Amadeus.'

I felt like I was home. I grew up backstage. I grew up falling asleep in

my mother's dressing room or in a second row center while watching her

do 'Taming of the Shrew.'"

Irving was born in a trunk, the daughter of actress Priscilla

Pointer and the late director Jules Irving. When she was 9 months old,

she debuted in her father's San Francisco production of

"Rumpelstiltskin." Last year she appeared in her brother's flop

musical version. "My dad was my hero. He and my mom. I'm lucky I had

great role models who I just adored. I still adore my mom. But my dad

was way up there on the pedestal ... It doesn't surprise me that I fell

for a director. My first love was a director. Steven's a director. I'm

sure I fit into all the textbooks in that way. As an actress, it's like

the teacher-pupil thing. The one who guides you." Kisses and Huggies

Irving hates it when news stories about her turn into stories about

her husband. But she wasn't bothered when wags began referring to "the

little creature" as "a Steven Spielberg production." Never mind that she

produced. "When I was pregnant nothing could upset me. I was the

happiest pregnant person you've ever met. I was sick in the beginning,

but every time I threw up it just confirmed the fact that he was on his

way."

It was three movies and a baby for Irving. While she was filming

"Heartbreak House" with Rex Harrison, she was publicizing her Blake

Edwards comedy "Micki & Maude" and preparing for a role in Orson

Welles' "The Cradle Will Rock." The Lamaze classes she took for the part

of the pregnant cellist in "Micki & Maude" prepared her for the real

thing.

But wouldn't you know it, Welles couldn't deliver. "It was a

wonderful project. A friend of Orson's called and said, 'Orson Welles

wants you to do this movie playing his first wife.' And I said, 'I'm

pregnant.' And they said, 'Oh well, never mind.' And then about a week

later, I got a call. 'Orson wants to know how impregnated are you?' I

said I was in my fourth month. And he rewrote the role to say {the wife}

was pregnant.

"We started having lunches and dinners together at Ma Maison and I'd

just sit and enjoy him. He had so many stories to tell and he was such a

lovely man, and I had the great pleasure of introducing Steven to him.

Steven was such a huge fan. And I got to bring the two of them together.

And the two of them were just all over each other, they were just such

huge fans. Then the money fell through." Homes, Sweet Homes

"I always thought my life was going to be on a stage. I never

expected to have any money." She's adamant about that. As it happens,

the Spielbergs are right comfortable. Three and a half years after

Irving walked out, they started seeing each other again, and married in

November 1985. They live quietly, she says, managing to tuck themselves

away in one of their assorted residences. Aside from her little adobe

house in Santa Fe, his Beverly Hills bachelor house, the Trump Tower

apartment with wraparound glass, the East Hampton estate -- a Dutch barn

moved from Pennsylvania -- there's a new West Coast home on the Pacific

Palisades. The Malibu Beach house, which burned recently along with

Spielberg's "E.T." memorabilia, is being rebuilt.

"When everyone was so upset, I was happy no one got hurt. I might

have felt differently if it had been my Santa Fe house that's got so

much memorabilia that can't be replaced. When you have so much, you

can't hold onto it that way. You just look after the live things ...

Possession-type things don't really mean anything to me. As long as

Steven and Max are there, we're home." Just Ducky

Irving checks off her "Crossing Delancey" publicity campaign as she

is chauffeured toward the Trump Tower, where her handsome prince waits

to take her to the chopper. She makes a mental note to take along the

duck that the cook prepared but they hadn't eaten. "Steven loves duck,"

she says. The limo pulls up to the curb, where a little guy in nerd

socks, baseball cap and Bermuda horts -- Mr. Amy Irving -- waits for

his princess.