Elizabeth Kuizenga was a second-generation Dutch American who met Jaap Romijn on a trip back to Holland. The couple settled in North Berkeley, where she began her still-active career as a college language teacher and he started a small woodworking business (“sawdust is still my favorite smell,” Romijn-Stamos says) that’s since grown formidably. Rebecca was six, and her sister, Tamara, four when the couple split up; Elizabeth moved to a house so nearby that the girls would cut through one yard, sometimes in their pajamas, to migrate between the homes.

Romijn-Stamos admits that she was shy and awkward, wearing long johns under her pants to augment her skinny legs. Tamara vouches for it: “She was terribly shy. When she wanted to go buy something, I would take her by the hand up to the counter, and buy it.”

But when the offer came to fly to Paris to start a career, Rebecca was on the plane within three days. “My father was fine with that because he’s European and wanted me to see Paris. But when it was clear I could work as a model, he said, ‘How are you gonna live?’ and I said, ‘I can do this.’ So, I did, and I did make money. And when I came back, he said, ‘This year I learned something from you.’ ”

From that discovery forward, it was giant steps for the girl who was still known by her maiden name. She moved from second tier on the fashion runways (“I never was any designer’s muse”) to the vaguer classification of supermodel, joining the robust glamour queens of the Victoria’s Secret catalog and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

One devoted fan was John Stamos, an Orange County–raised actor who had been a teen heartthrob as Blackie Parrish on General Hospital, and had starred as Uncle Jesse on the ABC sitcom Full House from 1987 to 1995. He journeyed to Fashion Week in New York in 1996 to track her down. In 1998, they married, and she became the hostess of MTV’s House of Style. As her career was fully launching, and his was becalmed (although he’s had a recent series of Broadway appearances that have drawn plenty of favorable reviews), the media snacked on the seeming disparity between her heat and his. One magazine that openly dissed her husband found themselves throwing a party for her cover appearance without the guest of honor—she stayed home. “What right do they have,” she says. “They don’t know us. Nobody knows us and our dynamic; we have a very, very private life, we’re very protective of our marriage and of each other. They were taking a shot at him for no reason.”

When the call came in late 1997 from the producers of Friends, Romijn-Stamos resisted. But when they offered her a part as “The Dirty Girl,” whose incredibly unkempt apartment unnerves Ross, she couldn’t resist the typecasting. (“Look, I’m such a slob,” she confesses after Tamara tells the tale of a chameleon Rebecca bought from her for 50 cents in their grammar school days. Lost in a heap of clothes in a closet, the creature was retrieved as a skeleton on a branch in its terrarium.)

After a day’s work, Courteney Cox insisted, “You should do this.” In 1999 came a substantial guest arc as David Spade’s wife on Just Shoot Me, and before that millennial year was over, she was spectacularly blue and largely unclad (“people on the set were telling me, ‘Rebecca, we have news for you, you’re nude’ ”) and part of a megafranchise.

This spring should bring her more credence. Says Hensleigh, “She doesn’t have a lot of the neuroses that one finds around town. I think she’s very comfortable in her own skin. She’s not a hugely experienced actress, but she is—it’s an old, hackneyed Hollywood expression—she is a natural.”

Romijn-Stamos is polishing off her fish soup, talking about Femme Fatale’s mixed reception, when Tony hollers excitedly, using a remote to snap on the overhead TV, where one of John Stamos’s commercials for a certain long-distance calling plan is airing. “I’m told,” she says, “it’s got quite a following among gay folks in New York.”

Um, yeah, well, he is a looker.

Romijn-Stamos gives an enjoyably abandoned guffaw. “No,” she says, shaking her head.“I mean Femme Fatale.”

Got it. She’s happy to have her husband back at their 20-acre ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains after he spent several months doing Nine on Broadway. “I think it’s always rough for two people who are actors to enter back into their reality, and figure out what it is again,” she says. “It was an intense several months for John, and I was absolutely in awe of him—he showed so much fearlessness and so much commitment.

“You become so consumed with what you’re doing that you no longer are paying enough attention to the relationship. I think that’s the key to make our marriage work—keep that balance healthy. We’ve been together for ten years, and it’s been amazing and wonderful and fun and so full of love, and it’s also been really, really, really hard. But we keep figuring out how to check and recheck, and find the rhythm again. We love being consumed by things that we’re working on; that’s what life is all about. I love that. I know I’m not an attention whore. I don’t think I’m an actor because of anything unfulfilled in me.

“When I’m having a problem I call my dad up, my little humble Dutch dad in his workshop with sawdust on the floor, and I’ll say, ‘I did this scene today. I could have done it so much better. If I just had it to do over.’

“And he says, ‘That’s what it means to be an artist.’ ”