LOS ANGELES – Last week, we felt like Guido Contini, the Fellini-inspired character played by Daniel Day Lewis, in Rob Marshall’s much-awaited film adaptation of the musical “Nine.”

In one weekend in New York, we interviewed the actresses who played the women in Guido’s charmed life: Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Stacy Ferguson (aka Fergie), Judi Dench, Kate Hudson. We also talked with Julianne Moore for Tom Ford’s “A Single Man” so, sorry Guido, we literally one-upped you.

Julianne, our last interview, exclaimed upon sitting on the chair just vacated by the legendary Sophia: “This is tough following Sophia Loren! I mean, come on. Oh my goodness! This is quite a challenge!”

Nomination-worthy

But the actress, nomination-worthy for her performance of a 1960s-era woman in Tom’s directorial debut, needn’t have worried. She was her usual engaging, pleasant self.

It was our first time to interview Sophia, the sultry, voluptuous brunette who stared at us and stimulated our imagination as a boy in those 1960s Life magazine covers. Wearing a décolletage-revealing top, the Italian diva was saucy and flippantly amusing.

Nicole, the skinniest of the lot, regaled us with stories of Sunday Rose, her baby with country music star Keith Urban.

At the end of our talk with Penelope Cruz, she whipped out a small camera and took group pictures of us for a magazine article she was writing.

And Marion Cotillard? Let’s just say that this French woman who swept the Best Actress prizes for lip-synching Edith Piaf’s classics in “La Vie En Rose” is just as compelling as she uses her real singing voice in “Nine.”

Stacy Ferguson – that’s her preferred name as an actress –exclaimed “Manny Pacquiao won!” to us and greeted our wife Janet as “Bebot!” She was one of the smartest, most articulate in this weekend of interviews.

Dame Judi Dench beamed when we told her that her “I Am 16 Going on 17” duet with Brendan O’Hea, their humorous number in a Richard Rodgers tribute concert, is a hit on Facebook.

Kate Hudson gave the best description of what it was like working with all these iconic women, as she recalled a scene where they all appear together: “I watched Nicole, this Australian goddess walking and then Marion, who is like a French angel. Then there’s this cute, quirky, sassy, sexy Spanish woman [Penelope] rolling down the steps. And then this Dame [Judi] and the icon [Sophia]. It was my turn and then I see this pop star [Fergie]. You just go, ‘This is awesome.’”

Watch for our features on these women in coming columns.

Serious Stewart

Sophia and her costars are heady company but the actress of the hour is Kristen Stewart, star of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” In our latest talk with Kristen, she was her usual self – serious and intense.

From Bella, she goes to portraying Joan Jett in a biopic of the 1970s teenage band, The Runaways, which is also the title of the coming film. She said, “I was so terrified before I started preproduction for ‘The Runaways.’ Everybody knows Joan Jett but nobody knows how she got her start with The Runaways. The reason girls are allowed to hold electric guitars and play rock and roll now is because The Runaways did it first. It was more about free will and sort of saying, ‘I can be just as animalistic as a man.’ I feel so completely responsible to her as a person. She has become my friend now.”

“This was the most important time of Joan’s life,” added the actress with those striking dark eyes. “You really hope that you did it right. It is pretty daunting. It’s scary. But it’s also the coolest opportunity I’ve been given.”

Of course, Kristen had to answer a question about her leading men, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. Here was her reply: “They both have been thrust into something that’s so much bigger than them. In talking about Taylor and Rob, I’m sort of talking about myself as well because we’re all in the same position. I know for a fact that they have been able to retain their entire selves. They have both become two of my really good friends. They’re both really good guys. And also really good actors.”

On Taylor, who reportedly had to work hard to keep his Jacob Black role (Fil-Am Michael Copon was said to be one of the actors considered), Kristen commented, “I think we would have been really hard pressed to find somebody who not only knew the character but was already mentally committed and also a really good actor. I think that the possibility of Taylor being replaced was made a bigger deal in the press. Maybe I’m remembering it the way I’d like to remember it. I just feel like there was never any other way.”

Asked about the challenges of playing Bella in the next movie, “Eclipse” (which they have finished filming), she replied: “I think the biggest change in ‘Eclipse’ from ‘New Moon’ is that you take a girl who completely questioned everything and has become cynical and then gets her faith back. That’s really hard to do. Even though she’s open and absolutely willing to fall in love again with someone else, she is genuinely of the mind that she will never feel anything like what she felt again. When it comes back, she’s strong enough to take it back and say, ‘Okay, those were mistakes. Those were choices that we made. But let’s own them and move on.’ She’s not fickle. She acknowledges that that’s how life is lived. Things change. She’s so terrified of change throughout the entire first two movies that at this point, she’s like, ‘Okay, great.’ She becomes very willing to roll with the punches.”

“I like it when Edward and Bella get back together,” she said about her favorite scene in “New Moon.” “There are almost no words spoken yet an entire relationship is reconciled. That alone is the coolest thing about this. It sums up why I love this story.”

“I like ‘New Moon’ of all the books,” she declared. “I read it from such a different perspective than most people. I read these books from the perspective of ‘I have to bring this to life. I have to play this.’ In this book, she reaches the highest and lowest points.”

“When I signed on to do the movie, there were four books,” she stated. “I think Stephenie [Meyer] is finished writing. And we have every intention of making all four books that have been written. I couldn’t imagine not completing the saga. Of course, I’m not exactly sure when we would do it. This is a character that I committed to once. I’m lucky to be able to follow her this long. Usually, I have such a tiny period of time to play a character. I usually do small movies. Without doing a TV series, this is really the only other venue that you can follow something for a long and concentrated period of time. It’s something that I really like and I would love to continue.”

Dakota Fanning, who has a small role in “New Moon,” is also in “The Runaways.” She and Kristen have become BFFs. “She’s amazing,” Kristen gushed about Dakota. “She’s incredible. I look up to her. And I’m three years older than she is. I have a relationship with her that I probably couldn’t have with most other people because she’s the only person that could possibly understand completely where I’m coming from. We share a lot. That makes any friendship closer. She’s just really cool. I really like her. We get along really well.”

On how she is surviving the “Twilight” mania, Kristen said, “If I didn’t have an outlet where I could really let it all out, I would be so discontent. I don’t know where I would be. I’ve worked really hard to get to this point.”

No, thank you but she prefers to be mortal. “I would definitely not want to live forever,” she said with a laugh. “It would be too much.”

E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, “The Nepales Report,” on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.