NO MISS PRISSY

EVEN BEFORE HER ROLE OPPOsite Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard made her a movie star, there was something cinematic about Whitney Houston. Her life has been big time and big screen. The daughter of gospel and R.-and-B. singer Cissy Houston, she began at the top with her 1985 debut album, Whitney Houston, and has sold 80 million records worldwide since. Her sweet lyrics (Didn't We Almost Have It All) recall the classic romances of Hollywood in the 1940s; her adventurous vocals (in songs like her majestic megahit I Will Always Love You) have the grandiosity of a Spielberg epic. And her 1992 marriage to controversial hip-hop singer Bobby Brown--an unlikely pairing that has fascinated the gossip press--has some of the urban grit of a Hughes brothers film.

Interviewed recently on a beach near her getaway home in Miami, Houston, 32, projected the contradictions. As she arrived clad in a form-fitting purple dress, hand in hand with Brown--the two have reconciled after a recent separation--she seemed ready for a camera to swoop down for an adoring close-up. Yet she also flashed some feisty homegirl attitude. "People think I'm Miss Prissy Pooh-Pooh, but I'm not; I like to have fun," she says, jabbing a finger in the air. "I can get down, really freakin' dirty with you. I was born in Newark, New Jersey, with two brothers and a very strong father. It made me tough--perhaps too tough."

"Tough" is not a word usually associated with Houston or her music. "Safe" and "homogenized" are, though not always fairly. She has a towering, dynamic voice, but when she sings material that's too slight for her skills (such as Love Is a Contact Sport), it's an unseemly mismatch, like Grant Hill dunking on a fifth-grader. But when Houston takes on a tune worthy of her gifts (like You Give Good Love), the result is something winged, almost seraphic. What's more, with the huge success of 1992's The Bodyguard--the movie made more than $400 million at the box office worldwide, while the sound track sold 33 million copies--she's proved she has multimedia clout.

She's ready to prove it again. Just before Christmas, Houston will be seen in Waiting to Exhale, the movie adaptation of Terry McMillan's popular novel about the lives of four black women. The sound track, containing three numbers by Houston, has just arrived in the stores and is already racking up hefty sales. In January Houston starts shooting The Preacher's Wife, a remake of the 1947 Cary Grant--Loretta Young comedy The Bishop's Wife, co-starring Denzel Washington, and she's at work on a gospel sound track for the film. Meanwhile, in search of projects to produce as well as star in, Houston has signed a development deal with Disney. Her first acquisition: the rights to a biography of actress Dorothy Dandridge. Says Houston: "I heard Janet Jackson wanted to play Dorothy very badly. If I feel it in my soul, I'll do it. If not, maybe I'll let Janet do it."

The Waiting to Exhale sound track is a virtual Who's Who of divadom, as compiled by Houston and the album's producer-composer, Kenneth ("Babyface") Edmonds. Along with Houston, the album features numbers by such highly regarded R.-and-B. performers as Toni Braxton, Aretha Franklin and Mary J. Blige. Yet Houston more than holds her own, particularly on Why Does It Hurt So Bad, with its masterly balance of pop zip and soulful melancholy. She was an enthusiastic advocate of the idea that the album should feature only women--a popular concept these days, with such recent all-female CDs as the pro-choice compilation Spirit of '73 (with Rosanne Cash and others), the MTV-sponsored Ain't Nothin' but a She Thing (with Annie Lennox and Melissa Etheridge) and the Christmas album Mother and Child (with Amy Grant and Martina McBride). "I wanted this to be an album of women with vocal distinction," says Houston, "that you could say their first name but you don't have to say their last." For Babyface, the key first name was Houston's. "When Whitney does a project," he says, "it sets a tone for the record in general, and it becomes her record."

Houston has not yet made the same mark with her acting. In Exhale, she wisely works as part of an ensemble that includes Angela Bassett, Lela Rochon and Loretta Devine. Bassett has most of the showy scenes (in one, her character sets her adulterous husband's belongings on fire), while Houston's scenes are quieter, less demanding (an emotional phone call to her mother, a slow dance at a party). Says author McMillan: "She's going to be a really better actress when she starts seeing herself as an actress and not a singer who acts."

Houston, who confesses that she never finished McMillan's novel ("I kind of got halfway through"), sees the film as a breakthrough for the image of black women because it presents them both as professionals and as caring mothers. And she defends Exhale against charges it's too tough on black men: "How come men can tell stories about women the way they want to tell them, and then when women tell stories, it's male bashing?"

If Houston is getting her movie career on a fast track, she also seems to be trying to get her personal life back in order. After their separation, she and Brown are back together (with two-year-old daughter Bobbi Kristina) and bickering mostly about who made the first move to reconcile. "You know you did," Brown says confidently to Houston. "You know you called me." She shoots back, "Who started calling who and sending who cards?"

Houston admits the marriage has been rocky, but says the media have overplayed their troubles: "I could tell you about some fouled-up marriages, but it ain't my business. They want to mess with us all the time . I married the brother I wanted to be with, and [the media] didn't understand it or like it, so therefore they tried to f---- with me; white America tried to f---- with me. They thought, Hard boy, good girl; it doesn't work."

Brown blames some of his problems on alcohol but says a stay at the Betty Ford Clinic has helped. "I'm definitely fit and over that hump," he says. "I've been in the business a long time, and the pressure wears on you. I went to that old bottle. The bottle's out of my life now, so everything is all good." Brown is working on a new album--and on repairing the marriage. "We're courting right now," he says. "It keeps it exciting. We love each other so dearly, so it's not hard for us to step away from each other a little while because we do love each other." Sounds sweet, a little sad, but hopeful too. Just like a Whitney Houston song.