By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY

NEW YORK A funny thing happened on the way to the recording studio last year as Janet Jackson was beginning work on a new album. The 34-year-old superstar suddenly decided that she should take a break from her music and have a fling with a man about four times her size on screen, that is.

"I'm a sucker for love," Jackson explains, sitting in a Manhattan hotel suite. She has come to the Big Apple, in fact, to tell the press about her new heartthrob. His name is Sherman Klump, and he is the grossly overweight protagonist of Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, the sequel to the 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor, which starred Eddie Murphy in a variation of the role originally played by Jerry Lewis.

Klumps, which opens today, again features Murphy aided by some very heavy makeup, wigs and foam and spandex suits among other face- and body-altering paraphernalia in a variety of roles, including Sherman, his equally portly parents and his grandmother. Jackson plays Denise Gaines, Sherman's fiancée and fellow college professor.

It's the first acting assignment that the singer who began her career playing child and teen roles in hit TV series such as Good Times, Diff'rent Strokes and Fame has appeared in since she made her film debut in 1993's Poetic Justice. In that movie, which was directed by John Singleton and co-starred the late rapper Tupac Shakur, Jackson portrayed an aspiring writer struggling to overcome the violence and poverty that surrounded her life in South Central Los Angeles.

"I got a lot of scripts after I did Poetic Justice," she says. "But most of them were like that film or about a character like the character I played in that film. There was always that underlying thing of shootings and gangs, that whole South Central vibe. I wanted to do something different. Then when I would get offered something I liked, there was usually a scheduling conflict; I was about to turn in an album, or I was in the middle of touring."

But when Murphy and Klumps director Peter Segal offered her the role of Denise after several auditions last summer, she couldn't turn them down.

"I really wanted this part," says Jackson, who also contributed a song, Doesn't Really Matter, to the soundtrack. "First of all, I loved (1996's) The Nutty Professor, and who could pass up the opportunity to work with Eddie? I loved the fact that it was a comedy, that it was light. And I loved the idea of playing this woman who's so sweet and wholesome."

Indeed, those who know Jackson primarily through her spicy videos and the increasingly sophisticated, sexually provocative material on her most recent albums, 1993's janet. and 1997's The Velvet Rope, may have trouble recognizing the prim, buttoned-up woman she plays.

"Jan is this superstar," Murphy says. "And what's brilliant is that (you see) none of that in the movie. Janet Jackson is incredibly sexy and beautiful and all that, and in this movie, she's just an adorable college professor and completely believable. And she could do all this actor stuff, like crying on cue."

Segal found Jackson similarly modest and emotionally available off-camera. "I would go to her trailer to talk about the day's work, and sometimes we would just shoot the breeze about friends and family," the director says. "And I'd realize that I was talking about my brother, Matt Segal, and she was talking about her brother Michael Jackson! I'd think, 'If I were a fly on the wall, I'd never believe I was having this conversation.'"

But growing up and growing famous as a member of pop music's most celebrated and publicly psychoanalyzed family also has made Jackson, in the words of Klumps producer Brian Grazer , "an extremely precise and measured person. If you can get her relaxed, though, she's a lot of fun."

One subject that Jackson seems less-than-relaxed in discussing is her relationship with Rene Elizondo, who for nearly a decade was her romantic and creative partner. Though Jackson and Elizondo had lived together openly for years, it recently was reported the two were secretly married in the early '90s, and that they separated in January.

Jackson, who previously was married to singer James DeBarge a brief union made when she was only 18 and annulled soon afterward says that she can't discuss her ongoing divorce proceedings for legal reasons. But she maintains that she and Elizondo, who helped co-write songs for every Jackson album since 1989's Rhythm Nation 1814 and directed several of her videos, hid their marriage in an effort to protect it.

"People in this industry don't get a fair chance with some things and especially with marriage. Other people say, 'Oh, that's not gonna work.' Or, 'I give it a year, maybe.' Look at the things people are saying now about Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton. I mean, why not at least give them positive energy, so that they'll have a better chance?

"I wanted to have as normal a marriage as possible, and I felt we both felt that the best way to do that was to keep it quiet. And we stayed together for seven, eight years, which is a long time in this business. Unfortunately, life is forever changing."

Predictably, Elizondo is not collaborating with Jackson on any material for her upcoming album, which she has been working on since wrapping Klumps in February and plans to release some time next year. But Jackson is adding a new teammate: Rock Wilder, an up-and-coming tunesmith whom Jackson describes as "a 6-foot-4 teddy bear. We're having so much fun together." That "we" would include hip-hop/soul savants Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who have worked with Jackson since her breakthrough album, 1986's Control.

Jackson acknowledges that her next album will enter a pop-music market very different from the one that embraced Control. But she claims not to be bothered by the brigade of barely post-adolescent baby divas who have been inspired by and, in some cases, flagrantly aped the sharp, animated choreography and girlish but decidedly post-feminist feistiness that have long been hallmarks of her performance style. One of Jackson's closest friends even dances in Britney Spears' stage show, and the more established singer recently attended one of the former Mouseketeer's concert appearances.

"I wound up meeting (Spears) after the show," Jackson says. "And she said to me, 'I'm such a big fan; I really admire you.' That's so flattering. Everyone gets inspiration from some place. And it's awesome to see someone else coming up who's dancing and singing, and seeing how all these kids relate to her. A lot of people put it down, but what she does is a positive thing."

If she has evolved artistically into an experienced role model, Jackson can seem like a blushing ingenue when talking about her personal life. Asked if she's dating anybody at the moment, she pauses, then smiles shyly and lowers her already soft voice. "I'm dating, and there's someone that I have feelings for," she begins carefully. "But I've never said anything. I don't think they know."

Huh?

"All this is really new for me. Because I've never dated! In my family, we grew up Jehovah's Witnesses, so you're not supposed to date until you're thinking of marriage. Well, I got married when I was 18, and then I got an annulment, and then Rene came into my life. So here I am at 34, and I know nothing about the whole dating thing.''

Though Jackson is in no hurry to make another trip to the altar, she admits that she has been thinking more about motherhood lately. The singer, who has 24 nieces and nephews by her eight siblings, recently had a heart-to-heart about the subject with sister LaToya, who is 10 years Janet's senior and childless.

"LaToya asked me if I was going to have kids," Jackson recalls. "And I said I didn't think I was going to. And she said, 'Look it don't wait till you're too old. Don't make that mistake.' And there was such pain in her eyes. Maybe I should listen to what she's saying. I may just be a single parent I'm really thinking about that now. But we'll see. If it's God's will, it'll happen."

Jackson says that she tries to apply the same patient, faith-driven philosophy to other aspects of her life. The media's scrutiny of her private affairs and those of her relatives remains a source of irritation; but the pedigreed pop star has come to realize that, ultimately, that nasty noise doesn't mean a thing.

"There are still times when I want to lash back," she admits. "But I let it pass. It always winds up passing somehow. You get this little layer of rhinoceros skin on you after a while, and you learn to just keep your eye on your goal, keep your feet planted on the ground and keep going. It's easier said than done, but you do. You do."

The paper gave the movie 3 stars (out of four)