WHAT’S a nice girl like Cheryl Tiegs doing with director Vincent Gallo? The all-American beauty waited until her 50s to make her screen debut – then chose “The Brown Bunny,” notorious for a graphic oral sex scene between Gallo and co-star Chloe Sevigny.
“It wasn’t as shocking as one would think,” the honey-blond Tiegs tells The Post over the phone from her summer villa in Grasse, France.
“What helped is that she [Sevigny’s character] was kind of sympathetic. Her little squeaks, her little squeals were like saying, ‘Help me.'”
In fact, the 56-year-old Tiegs gushes with praise for Gallo, who is known for verbally abusing critics and fellow celebrities.
“I think he’s really smart and he can be outrageous and he can be shocking, yet there’s a very sweet, vulnerable, wonderful lovable side to Vincent,” she says.
“He definitely has a dark side, but that’s not a bad thing.”
The film – which Gallo wrote, directed, edited and produced – features him as motorcycle racer Bud Clay, driving from an event in New Hampshire to his home in Los Angeles.
Along the way, he stops for a soda and encounters Lilly (Tiegs), a bottle blonde sitting at a picnic table, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee.
Without a word, the two strangers launch into hot and heavy kissing, which ends as quickly as it begins.
“We just kissed all day,” Tiegs says of the scene, which was filmed two years ago in Minnesota, where she was vacationing.
“We probably started filming about 11, and the sun went down about 8 or 9, and we didn’t even stop for lunch.
“We started out doing it with dialogue, and he said it’s not right, so we did it in total silence.
“Sometimes doing things in total silence is harder than having something verbal so you can express yourself.
“My character was very needy. I wanted him to care for me, I wanted to have some kind of connection with this man.
“Obviously we were attracted to each other.”
On a kissing scale of 1 to 10, Tiegs gives Gallo a perfect score – “so that made it easy.”
A household name in the 1970s along with Farrah Fawcett and Christie Brinkley, Tiegs made her modeling debut at age 17 and is best known for her frequent appearances in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issues.
Recently divorced from husband No. 4 – yoga guru Rod Stryker – Tiegs is currently raising the twin boys they had by a surrogate mom in 2002, and promoting a cream touted as an alternative to botox.
Being asked to appear in “The Brown Bunny,” she says, was a surprise.
“He called me from New York and said, ‘Hi, I’m Vincent Gallo.’
“I didn’t know who Vincent Gallo was, and he said to rent ‘Buffalo 66’ [Gallo’s directorial debut].
“And I said ‘OK,’ but it took me a month to rent it.”
She liked what she saw, and Gallo, now 42, drove cross country to shoot the scene.
“He said he had seen me at the Vanity Fair party at Morton’s after the Oscars, and that I was very tall and had my beauty, but he could see my vulnerability and shyness and awkwardness. I loved that.”
Tiegs wasn’t in Cannes when “The Brown Bunny” made its debut to much disdain.
(The version opening in New York on Friday is 26 minutes shorter than the one shown at the festival.)
When Roger Ebert called it the worst film in Cannes history, Gallo put a curse on the critic’s prostate. Ebert subsequently underwent treatment for a non-life-threatening cancer.
Gallo also called Ebert a “fat pig,” to which Ebert responded:
“It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of ‘The Brown Bunny.'”
“I think that’s all said and done and over with,” Tiegs says of the Ebert-Gallo feud.
“Roger’s actually a big fan of Vincent Gallo. I don’t know if he’s a big fan of ‘The Brown Bunny,’ but he’s a big fan of Vincent Gallo. “It’s time to let that go.”
Still, don’t expect to see Tiegs in more movies.
“No, this is my first and only film. I really enjoyed this particular film, but I’m not looking to become an actress all of a sudden.”