"I am doing my first beauty campaign at 41!"

She's the bumbling yet adorable Susan Mayer in Desperate Housewives, the series that's scheduled to return for a second season on Star World from this Sunday. Teri Hatcher talks about how it's like to play Susan in the new season. Now the second season is coming up, is it a pleasure or is it strange compared to the first season when everything is new? I think it is even better. I remember Marc and I were talking about it that it feels like something a little bit more relaxed. And we have kicked into a thing now that there is a doctor and an ex-husband and a plumber and it is sort of a lot of fun with emotions going all around. And, there is great writing, great things for me to play, every day is more exploration and challenging. It absolutely hasn't gotten any less. You have a book coming out; right? Uh-huh, I do. It is called, Burnt Toast and Other Philosophies of Life and basically I have used the idea of burnt toast as a metaphor....if you are going to sit down at breakfast and you have a plate of golden brown toast and then one of the pieces stayed in the toaster too long, then the husband and the children would get the good toast and the mom would probably take that burnt piece of toast! It is just what we do. It's about my own journey of life. So, you are supposed to laugh through some of it and maybe cry through some of it. It's not at all a tell-all, it is more about me sharing my own successes and failures, of trying to take better care of myself as a woman and as a mother and all of that. Do you wish it was the kind of thing that Susan would pick up and read? Oh, she should read it. I should read it. I joke that I wrote it so I can read it because I need to, and remind myself how to actually behave. Is it frustrating to see some of the decisions Susan is making, do you sit back and say "hmmm"? Well, but that's what is funny. It's like a horror movie when the actors walk down the dark hallway and you think, "Don't go into that room." And we are all sitting there and they go in anyway and of course, they get eaten by the monster. That's part of the entertainment of it and it makes Susan fun to play. Do you think the men on the show feel insecure about their roles because their roles are not as crucial as those of the housewives? I don't know because I'm not them. I know, even I will say, "So, okay, Susan is going to the hospital, am I out?" "Am I dead?" I mean, people will say to me, "Oh, they can't kill you, you're the housewives. But I sort of think, "Well, I don't know. There could be other housewives." So I think we are all a little insecure sometimes about it, but we all just love each other so much. It is such a really great group of people. Last year, when Steven died, nobody wanted to see him go. It was really, really hard because we are a tight group, so I don't know the answer to that. In the first season, we sometimes thought, "Poor Teri Hatcher has to play every humiliating scene on the show." Oh, no, I like it. It's funny. I like it. It's all right with me. Besides the book, do you have any other projects? Well, I'm the new Clairol, Nice and Easy girl. My first beauty campaign at 41 years old! And I have a production company that I'm starting and we're hoping to produce a couple of movies and television shows in the next few years. What's the name of the company? "Isbe," I-s-b-e. What is and what can be. It's spiritual. And I'm looking at movies, but to be honest, as much as I love the creativity of films, it's a very different thing than what we get here on our show because you have much more time and depth and examination and a certain art from the character's piece. We have a real limited hiatus, it is important to me to travel with my daughter to spend time with her, so it becomes a real struggle of priority of what is more important. Luckily for me, there are different things that make me happy. I don't have to just be in a movie. I can write; I can travel; I can spend my time a lot of ways. In your show you are having a nice relationship with your daughter and you are asking her for advice, would you like to have that in your personal life too? No, I would never expect that. She's eight, I should take care of her.