WHAT DID SINGER-ACTRESS JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT DO LAST SUMMER? RECORD AN ALBUM!

Huh?

Isn't she the same girl-next-door bombshell on the cover of dozens of magazines and on the top of everyone's Hot list? The one who played Bailey's fiery girlfriend in Party of Five? And the busty scream queen in the teen thriller I Know What You Did Last Summer? Those feelings of inadequacy, she says, aren't about her acting career. She's referring to her singer-songwriter talents. Her new album BareNaked, with its title track currently receiving wide radio and music-video play, will be released on October 8, 2002.

"BareNaked is a play on a lot of times in my life," says the actress in an interview during a promotional stopover in Toronto. "It's a day in the life of me and anyone else in the world who feels vulnerable and insecure and just wants to know that someone else out there feels exactly the same way."

Known as Love to family and friends, the 23-year-old Texan is keenly aware that she's going to have a tough time selling people on her musical ambitions.

Russell Crowe, Keanu Reeves and Billy Bob Thornton all learned quickly, through poor sales, that audiences are fickle about actors becoming musicians. Moving from music to the big screen seems more acceptable - as it was for Cher, Courtney Love, Madonna and the current It girl, Jennifer Lopez.

"People could be really tough on me if they wanted to, and they'd have reason to do it," Hewitt admits. "In listening to (the CD) no one will know that this has been my dream since I was six years old."

But this isn't Hewitt's first foray in the music biz. The album, her fourth, is an attempt at a comeback. Her previous three, filled with cotton-candy dance tunes, were largely ignored by everyone save school children in Japan, the only place her albums have been successful.

"You just have to work really hard in the music industry because there's so many people and I'm coming in at a time when there's 900 other female singer-songwriters exactly my age."

But will she tour around the clock like the others (think Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton) in the quest for a top 10 hit?

"I want to know that an audience really wants me to be there," she says. "But I don't want to do it if I'm going to get to some stadium and there's four people . . . That would be depressing."

One wonders why the L.A. resident continues to sing, given her success with acting.

"Singing is just something in my spirit and I can't get rid of it," she replies.

And if forced to choose, she says she'd commit to music.

"I would probably choose singing at the end of the day. I've tried so hard to go 'Just get over it,' because what if it bombs and then I'm remembered as the sucky singer forever?"

Hoping to avoid that fate, Hewitt has changed her music-making formula and teamed up with Meredith Brooks, the singer-songwriter-guitarist who penned the No. 1 hit Bitch. Hewitt co-wrote the 12 pop-rock songs with Brooks and R and B crooner Brian McKnight.

"Meredith Brooks was somebody who really helped me realize it was OK to have an opinion about something," Hewitt says. "It took me a long time to become confident in the fact that I didn't have to wait until I was 40 to speak my mind about things."

She knows she's going to surprise some people with the guitar-based songs, coming from the same label that brought the world the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears.

"I wanted to completely go away from that because the kind of music that I listen to is like Janis Joplin, Al Green, Billy Withers, Billie Holiday, Melissa Etheridge and Aerosmith," she says.

But before the record becomes available in stores, The Tuxedo, starring Hewitt and Jackie Chan, will hit theatres. Just don't look for a preview of the actress's singing chops in the film - she's keeping the two careers separate, for now anyway.