WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

LYNDA CARTER has been flying the American flag for about as long as she can remember. Although she didn't actually get to fly it as a cheerleader at high school, they gave it to her to carry for her country as "Miss USA" and she pulled it off with sufficient aplomb to find herself clad in it, with added sequins, for some years in the immensely popular TV series, Wonder Woman.

It's only really recently that she's been able to hang it up and come out as herself: actress, singer and big-budget producer with ambitious and notable projects lined up.

The first on her very busy schedule is a three-hour telemovie about the dumping of chemicals in America, which her company will produce and she'll act in.

"This time I won't be the woman who saves the day like Wonder Woman did. Just a character who's involved in the problem of hazardous waste, the illegal dumping of dangerous chemicals, which is something that's going on continually in various unknown, or undisclosed, places all over the States. There's been plenty of talk recently about nuclear disposal but I see chemical dumping as being far more serious because nobody knows in which river or lake or under what ground this stuff is being off-loaded," she explains.

The film will be a straight mystery drama called The Last Song, designed to inform entertainingly so that when all is revealed on the news, people will realise it's fact, not fiction.

Straight after that one she's launching into a movie on the shroud of Christ that was found in Turin, which Lynda, a practising Christian, hopes will show people that Christ existed.

It'll be her way of passing on the message without proselytising, she tells me, digging in her handbag for a pair of specs.

"Excuse me, I'm acutely shortsighted," she purrs. "You're a blur without these. In fact, most of my life is a wonderful blur! On camera I don't see anything at all!"

The thought of Wonder Woman hurling herself into a blissful blur for her crazy stunts intrigues me, but apparently didn't bother her. "I paced my marks out so that I hit them without ever looking at them. I never actually hurt myself badly doing stunts although towards the end they wouldn't let me do my own stunts because I was worth too much to them.

"The show was only supposed to be a fun thing. Everybody in the States saw it as that, but over here in England it's been misunderstood, mainly I think by the Press who seem to have put me up as a big sex symbol. It's crazy - I'm not. I don't wear low-cut dresses or do the quivering lips routine. I think the costume is certainly a lot more than the bikinis you see on every beach. Wonder Woman is just a girl who wears the flag, no more, no less."

Meeting her in the flesh she's cool, restrained, very classy and sharply astute. She's been operating quietly on the commercial front to get where she is now; 27 and bankable and primed to complete the circle she's been working through to get back to being a singer, her first love and also the career she kicked off with 12 years ago, as a schoolgirl singer in the smokey cocktail lounges of her homestate Arizona. By the age of 17 she'd made it to Las Vegas for a gig at `The Sahara'.

"I thought I was great because I had my name on the marquee but it wasn't such a big deal. I was still under-age and had to enter the lounge through the kitchen." (Las Vegas under-21 nightclub laws are like that.) "I found the general lifestyle of cheap hotels and endless travelling and no home rather depressing."

She gave it up and on the persuasion of her mother, returned home for the town's beauty competition and became "Miss Phoenix" instead. As "Miss USA" she made the cross to London for the big draw, lost and went home, but wisely via Hollywood and the Wonder Woman audition.

"I loved doing the series and learned an awful lot about making films, as you do when you're working on a soundstage ten hours a day, five days a week. And on top of that I was paid a lot of money for apprenticing! I'm certainly not trying to shed that image at all but now I find that natural progression has turned the page in my book and I'm moving on to singing." Which in her terms means a 26-piece backing band, 50,000 dollars worth of wardrobe and her name huge in neon lights, Plus a musical special for CBS TV (which became the network's highest rated show for last year); a single "Toto", wnich she composed herself about Dorothy warbling to her dog along the yellow-brick road on her way to Oz; an album called "Portraits" out and another one on the way. Triumphs she attributes to her husband and manager, Ron Samuels, who insisted that she stay under wraps until she was ready to be launched vocally with maximum impact to hit the right chord. Her stage debut was at the illustrious "Caesar's Palace" in Las Vegas and thousands came to see if Wonder Woman could fly and sing. They found she could.

"If only I'd known how mindboggling it is to be on a concert stage with a huge live audience when I was doing lounge singing, I would never have given it up. Being part of a big show is totally satisfying. I'm hooked and I certainly don't want to kick it. We're talking to the BBC about a few specials and to promoters about concerts here.

"I see no reason to stop now that the momentum is building up. It's taken time. I'm going to get in there and enjoy it. To stop would definitely be a mistake," she said at the end of our interview.