TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- Working alongside Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston, Shirley MacLaine sympathized over the paparazzi frenzy her co-stars endured.Then MacLaine had her own little drama with celebrity-stalking photographers, who massed outside a Malibu, California, coffee shop where she had stopped with her canine soul mate, her terrier Terry, whom she wrote about in the book "Out on a Leash.""I guess Britney and the dancer didn't show up that day," MacLaine told The Associated Press at September's Toronto International Film Festival, where she was promoting her film "In Her Shoes." "There were the paparazzi, about 30 of them outside."I was so appalled. They were kind of waiting for Terry to walk out and perhaps take a poop or something, because she's famous herself, and what would I do about the poop? And would they make me mad? Because the whole point is, they want to make you mad, and then they get a good picture."Luckily, the actress ran into two stunt men she had worked with on "Cannonball Run II" "or some dumb, stupid picture I made," said the outspoken MacLaine. They gathered a group of men who huddled around and whisked MacLaine and Terry to her car, blocking them from view so the paparazzi never saw her leave.So the photographers "got no poop and they got no me," MacLaine gloated.The 71-year-old MacLaine was a blunt, irreverent, self-deprecating chatterbox as she sat alongside Terry, whom she believes she knew in a past life in ancient Egypt ("I think I didn't get it then, and she's come back to help me get it," MacLaine said of her dog. "The big it.").For all her cosmic thinking and beliefs about reincarnation, MacLaine is a down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is person."I expected her to be a little more airy-fairy, but she's not. She's really grounded. She's a very matter-of-fact person, actually," "In Her Shoes" co-star Toni Collette said. "She's a very strong person, very opinionated, and I really appreciate the fact that there's absolutely no crap with her. What she says is what she means, and it's very refreshing."Busy yearMacLaine is having one of her busiest years ever with three big studio films. After appearing in last summer's "Bewitched," MacLaine co-stars in "In Her Shoes," playing a previously unknown grandma to feuding sisters (Diaz and Collette), whose intercession helps reconcile the siblings.Coming in December is "Rumor Has It," with MacLaine in a variation of the Mrs. Robinson character from "The Graduate," the grandmother of a woman (Aniston) who discovers her family may have been the basis for the novel and 1967 movie adaptation that starred Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft.A best-selling author whose books include her spiritual memoir "Out on a Limb," MacLaine said she had been content to continue writing and take on the occasional acting role. Then suddenly, her dance card filled up with this year's rush of films."And I'm developing three more pictures to do after this," MacLaine said. "I don't know what the synchronicity is all about, but it's there."MacLaine gushes over her juicy parts in "In Her Shoes" and "Rumor Has It," and true to cheeky form, dismisses the critically panned "Bewitched," a big-screen update of the television sitcom. Ask about "Bewitched," in which MacLaine played an actress playing Endora, and she says, "Forget it." On "Bewitched," MacLaine was enchanted by the notion of playing witchy mother-in-law Endora, a role originated on the TV series by Agnes Moorhead. Instead, she was cast as an actress who plays Endora in a new TV version of "Bewitched.""I don't want to talk about that movie," said MacLaine, brushing aside "Bewitched" questions. "Forget it. Don't waste your time. It's over, done."For "In Her Shoes," director Curtis Hanson wanted a low-key character, a widowed woman hiding from her own life by playing caretaker for her neighbors at a retirement community. Hanson, a fan of MacLaine's showy persona both on screen and off, said he and the actress spent a long time conferring to make sure she was interested in that approach to the character."I think Shirley took it as a challenge and therefore was excited by it, because I think that's what makes her life exciting," Hanson said. "She doesn't just sit down and do the same things. She's always looking for something, even if it's a fight. She's engaged. You can talk about a wealth of subjects with her, and I think she looked at me as someone who would be engaging, that wasn't just going to say, 'OK, roll. Shirley, do your thing.' "Confidence in 'contained'MacLaine notes she has taken on more restrained roles before, among them the 1960 classic "The Apartment," but concedes this was the first in a while."I'm old enough now to have the confidence to do 'contained,"' MacLaine said. "I've done it, but just not lately. Not in my years of wisdom."As the Mrs. Robinson-like character in "Rumor Has It," MacLaine was back to her old self."I am not the Anne Bancroft interpretation," MacLaine said. "I'm back to doing what I do. Flamboyant, cynical and foul-mouthed, and drinks and smokes and says 'Go (expletive) in your shoes.' Loved it."Growing up in Virginia, MacLaine studied ballet, and she and younger brother Warren Beatty attended a drama school run by their mother.In 1954, MacLaine was in the chorus line and understudy to star Carol Haney in "The Pajama Game" on Broadway when she was called on to fill in for the injured lead actress. Producer Hal Wallis caught the show and brought MacLaine to Hollywood, with the lead in Alfred Hitchcock's black comedy "The Trouble With Harry" her first film role.MacLaine earned her first Oscar nomination with 1958's "Some Came Running" and also was nominated for "The Apartment," "Irma la Douce" and "The Turning Point" before winning for her favorite role, as domineering mother Aurora in 1983's "Terms of Endearment."Among upcoming films she hopes to make are two with screenplays she wrote herself, and MacLaine has been making notes for a new book about wisdom attained through growing older.She has become pragmatic about the business of Hollywood, knowing box-office results are the key to her future films, and bemoans the way modern movies typically present older women as "non-sexual, uncolorful, eccentric.""But what is the perception of women in general on the screen?" MacLaine said. "That's a problem right there, because Hollywood still doesn't know what to do with women. Remember the days of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Myrna Loy and Susan Hayward, and oh, my God, what happened? ..."I've never cared whether a picture makes money or not. Now I care, because it's all about whether they'll finance the next one. And we've got to start making better pictures in Hollywood."Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.