05/11/2001 The Boston Globe THIRD Page C.4 (Copyright 2001)

Eliza Dushku - once of Watertown, now of Los Angeles and the world - may be the babe adorning the May cover of Maxim magazine, but she's also somebody's daughter. Dushku, 20, has starred in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and will star in the upcoming films "The New Guy" and "City by the Sea" (with Robert De Niro). But on a recent pre- Mother's Day lunch at the Federalist, she's hanging with her best bud, her mom, Judy Dushku, 59, a professor of government at Suffolk University.

Eliza, the youngest of four children, and the only female, was on the brink of going to Suffolk when "Buffy" came a-knockin.' "`Buffy" or Suffolk? "Buffy" or Suffolk?, she thought. "I had my dorm all set and had been through orientation." she said. "I'd never heard of the show, either."

Eliza had an acting history that dated to when she was 9. She had been taking two years off, but she opted to get back in the Hollywood game.

In "City by the Sea," which she terms "a complex, sad story with a theme of parental responsibility," Eliza plays "a 19-year-old junkie with an 18-month-old baby. She's pathetic, poor, addicted."

Eliza was shooting this movie at the same time she was commuting to Texas to shoot "Bring It On."

"Being a junkie," she says, "I smoked a lot of cigarettes and tried to get ratty. They'd tell me `Don't wash your hair, get some zits.' It was like I got to become a crackhead without doing crack. Then, I'd go back to Texas being a bubbly cheerleader."

Eliza and Judy discuss her upbringing. Judy paints a rosy picture. "Get outta here!" Eliza says, laughing and noting their disagreements about curfews and boys. "We clashed." On the movie set, her mom says, Eliza "was mature and took care of herself. And when she came home she was my little girl."

Eliza is little no longer in Maxim. But she shed less clothing than the usual model. "It was tough," she says, of the 14-hour shoot. "Originally, I didn't want to do it, as Maxim girls tend to be pretty naked. But the studio guys for the film [coming out Sept. 24] `The New Guy,' wanted me to do it." Looking at the results, she laughs and says, "They did a lot of airbrushing."