How Now, Frau? Longtime Comic Actress Mindy Sterling Hopes To Build On Success Of ‘Austin Powers’ Movies

Mindy Sterling wants her own doll.

Excuse me, Frau Farbissina wants her own doll.

And she wants it, as she might scream in her “Austin Powers” character, mach SCHNELL!

“They’re coming out with a Scott doll and a Fembot doll and a Vanessa doll,” Sterling says. “And yet no Frau Farbissina.”

So sad.

But let’s back up a bit here. Who is this Frau Farbissina?

And who is Mindy Sterling?

Let’s take them in order.

Frau Farbissina is one of the main recurring characters in the incredibly popular “Austin Powers” film series. For those of you who have been living under a Big Boy burger for the past four years, “Austin Powers” is a satire on the James Bond character.

Complete with bad English teeth and an incredibly oversized libido, Austin Powers is the creation of former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Mike Myers.

The two “Austin Powers” movies, the original in 1997 and last summer’s sequel —”Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” — have together grossed more than $260 million in theaters. Both have been as successful, and maybe more, on home video.

So much so that you can still hear fans mumbling a number of “Austin Powers” catch phrases:

Example: “Oh, be-haaave!”

Example: “I put the `grrrr’ in swinger, baby, yeah!”

Example: “You’re shagadelic, baby!”

Frau Farbissina is the assistant to Austin Powers’ archrival, the demented Dr. Evil (Myers plays both characters). She bears a remarkable resemblance to the matronly assassin played by Lotte Lenya in the 1963 Bond film “From Russia With Love.” An elfin dominatrix type, the Frau is most known for her forehead curl, the way she screeches orders, her “relationship” with Dr. Evil and his son Scott (Seth Green), and her riding crop.

And Sterling? She’s the 46-year-old Los Angeles-based actress behind Frau Farbissina’s comic mask.

A New Jersey native who grew up in Miami, Sterling is the daughter of a stand-up comic (who once partnered with Shecky Greene) and a dancer. She was, she believes, born to the spotlight “bloodline.”

“I really do believe that it is somewhere in your system,” she says.

As she confesses this, Sterling is just a few hours away from giving her first talk before a college audience. In town on a recent Friday afternoon to speak at Eastern Washington University, she is a bundle of barely restrained energy. Small even by movie-actor standards, where inches are added to height as often as years are subtracted from age, she is much more attractive than her movie roles would suggest.

Sterling’s large brown eyes seem to look out at the world with equal portions of show-biz candor and the wonder of it all.

The fact is, Sterling is now in one of those holding patterns that movie careers tend to throw at performers: She’s well enough known to attract stares from strangers, yet she lacks the star power necessary to make future projects a certainty.

Since the second “Austin Powers” movie wrapped, she’s worked on the dark comedy “Drop Dead Gorgeous” and the forthcoming Jim Carrey Christmas movie “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” She appears regularly on Thursday nights with her old improvisational comedy troupe, The Groundlings (former home of Spokane natives Deanna Oliver and Julia Sweeney). And she had high hopes for the upcoming television pilot season.

“I would really like to do a television series,” she says. A sitcom, maybe, or something like “Ally McBeal.”

Television is where she always thought she’d end up, even 20 years ago when she went to Los Angeles and began doing community theater. Soon afterward, she joined an improv comedy group (not The Groundlings), and began doing the work that helped her overcome her youthful shyness.

Even so, it took a while before she had the nerve to knock on The Groundlings’ door. And she did so only when she was asked to join a class without the obligatory audition because, she says, by that time “they knew me.”

That was in 1984. In the years since, the hours of performance and, ultimately, teaching improv haven’t dulled the anxiety she feels before an audition.

Especially the audition for the first “Austin Powers.”

Sterling leans across a table as she describes the scene.

“I was so nervous because I knew Mike,” she says. “And I was probably as close to the director (Jay Roach) as you and I are now. He had just come to see me at The Groundlings, where I was performing with Mike, and he was like, `Oh, I’ve seen your work.”’

Sterling winces.

“As much as you might think that would make me feel better, I think it put more pressure on me,” she says, “like, `Oh, I’ve REALLY got to be funny now!”’

Then Roach asked her to just take a scene from the script and … improvise!

“And it’s like, `I’m an improviser! Feel comfortable! I’M NOT!”’

What she was, though, was successful. Roach liked her. More important, Myers liked her. And, of course, the feeling was - and remains - mutual.

“Mike’s really open to improv, and that’s a great gift,” Sterling says. “Look, he wants a funny film, he wants a funny scene. And if you stray from the dialogue, he could care less. He doesn’t have that big of an ego.”

The trouble is, he sometimes doesn’t know when to quit.

“I remember there was one scene (in the second film), it was the one where Mike would drink the coffee from Starbucks,” Sterling recalls. “And he’s got this foam all over his nose, and he’s looking at me. He says something in German, and I couldn’t keep a straight face. Because when Mike knows he’s got you, he’ll go a step further to really blast you.”

In fact, many of the funniest moments never made the movie.

“The outtakes were the most spectacular, especially to watch Mike just go on,” she says. “You could hear the crew holding back, every once in a while (she mimes stifling laughter), so when Jay would yell `Cut!’ the laughter was so amazing.”

Sterling’s fear, as she contemplates her future, is that such a working atmosphere will prove all too rare.

“I don’t think I’ll ever again have as much fun working with anyone as I had with him and his ensemble,” she says.

Playing Dr. Evil to Myers’ Mini-Me, you can almost hear Sterling warble another “Austin Powers” line:

“You complete me.”

Yeah, baby, you do.