Eva Longoria, the Lane's hot chick

Eva Longoria is a real Texan homebody and doesn't feel a part of the Hollywood scene.

Eva Longoria laughs like a kookaburra with a cold. This is not a sound you're likely to hear coming from her Desperate Housewives character, Gabrielle. Today it gargles from her throat like a deranged bird at the slightest hint of humour.

It's Saturday morning in Los Angeles and the tiny star is perched on a director's chair, legs crossed, boots dangling above the ground. Just about every woman in this room will later complain they felt like an elephant in her presence. It's a wonder her basketballer boyfriend Tony Parker, who is a full foot taller, doesn't suffer a paternal complex when he heads out with her on the red carpet.

Asked about her stature and the perpetual scrutiny of the cast's dress sizes, Longoria gives her bird laugh, this time nervously.

"I'm blessed to be genetically petite," she says. "But my reason for working out is health, not so much that I want to be really skinny."

Helpfully, for the contingent of entertainment journalists in the room but arguably not so for her co-stars, she casually mentions that Felicity Huffman used to be bulimic; and she can't understand why there has been so much attention paid to Teri Hatcher's diminishing frame.

Openly discussing colleagues' flaws may be taboo in Hollywood but Longoria isn't the type to hold back. She likes talking about Parker too. She has learned a smattering of French since hooking up with the French-born athlete just over a year ago, and performs her "Because I'm worth it" L'Oreal ad in his native tongue as proof.

Countless times she has been photographed courtside with Parker's player number bejewelled on her jeans.

When she's not shooting Desperate Housewives, she'll fly home to be with her man for as little time as eight hours. So she's not exactly like Gabrielle, then, who brushes off husband Carlos' affections the minute she gets what she wants?

"No. God, no. We are probably the exact opposites. I'm very domestic. I always say I'm desperate to be a housewife. I'm a little bit of Bree and a little bit of Lynette in the sense of wanting to be a working mom. I want a big family and stuff.

"But I cook every day. I am very domestic. I love cleaning and I love sewing. I have sewn all of the drapes in my house. Tony tried to walk out of the house in a wrinkled shirt and I was like, 'Get that shirt off'. I had to iron it."

Martha Stewart-isms aside, Longoria has always seemed well-cast as Gabrielle, a kept woman with a disease-like approach to shopping. Early TV roles include a flight attendant on Beverly Hills 90210, and a stint on the trashy glam The Young and the Restless.

Before turning to acting, Longoria was the ultimate embodiment of American beauty - a pageant queen, crowned Miss Texas in 1996. For someone who "dreads" squeezing into Gaby's sexy outfits, old footage of the tiara-toting, one-piece-wearing winner shows the actress not exactly shying away from the attention.

Longoria fidgets before settling on the words "character-building" to describe the experience. "In Texas it is a big deal. If you're a boy you have to play football, and if you're a girl you have to be in pageants. So I was bred to be in pageants. It's very common."

And what of being the young, hot one on Desperate Housewives, dubbed slightly scornfully by Huffman as "perfect little Eva"? Being the youngest in the cast can't be easy when your cast mates are a decade older.

"I never considered them older, I considered them more experienced," she says. "They have all been on hit television shows. They have all had success and this is their second time around."

When the show started it was her co-star Marcia Cross, a star made on Melrose Place, who first warned Longoria her life was about to change - big time. Thinking she was referring to the pay cheque, Longoria was amazed when Desperate Housewives' popularity rocketed.

But it was Nicollette Sheridan, (who plays Wisteria Lane's resident man-eater, Edie) whose words of advice had the biggest impact.

"She goes, 'I was the young hot one on Knots Landing with these older, mean women on the show. If anybody is mean to you, you tell me.' She didn't want me to have that same experience."

She needn't have worried, she laughs, although she did expect the public would "love to hate" Gabrielle after her affair with the teenage gardener.

"But no, people really identify with her desperation and her battle to want to be loved, and her struggle to not be as selfish as she was," she says. "It's fun as an actor to find new colours of how am I going to define her."

This season, Longoria has relished the chance to play up what she calls her "silly" comedic side. Of Gaby's short-lived pregnancy, dashed by a trip down the stairs, she got to whine about her burgeoning waistline rather than gush about the arrival of her bundle of joy.

Now Gaby is embroiled in a jealous stand-off that ends with her "kicking a nun's ass at an altar at church".

"I love physical comedy. Desperate Housewives gives me the opportunity to play a big range because we're a dramedy."

The show has also given her the opportunity to branch out, career-wise. After the embarrassment of last year's Emmy Awards, when she and Sheridan were the only housewives not nominated for awards, she is now gearing up to promote two films. The first is the indie, Harsh Times with Christian Bale, in which she plays a screw-up's upwardly mobile girlfriend.

But the one tipped to show Longoria in a new light is The Sentinel, in which she plays a secret service agent opposite Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland and Kim Basinger.

"It was exciting," she says. "I'm in a suit the whole time. I'm nobody's love interest. I'm not kissing anybody. I really got lost. You forget that I play Gabrielle on Desperate Housewives because she [the secret service agent] is tough and shooting people and protecting the President. It was refreshing to see that and I hope the audience will react, 'Wow, I didn't know she could do that'."

Douglas recently gave his seal of approval when he said, "She's a very credible actress and has a great butt. What more can a guy ask for?"

Longoria is now looking at scripts to shoot during her hiatus, which won't be easy with a two-hour season finale, a two-hour season-three premiere and snuggle time with Tony eating into her holidays. But she'd like to do a romantic comedy with the likes of Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller or Will Ferrell.

Or swing the opposite way and make a film about Mexican civil rights activist Dolores Huerta. For now though she is happy to bask in the glory of being the hottest chick on Wisteria Lane.

"I'm very flattered by the attention the show gets and the accolades and the recognition. I mean, it is a loss of privacy and anonymity and everybody knows you but it's just the price you pay.

"My life and my family and everything I do is in Texas so I'm not really in the Hollywood scene and out at the Ivy and all that stuff. I just kind of stay at home."

Spoken like a true housewife.