Relentless drive

If you want to know how Gwen Stefani maintains her youthful enthusiasm, not to mention her girlish figure, try chatting with her for half an hour. But take your vitamins first.

“I’m just going to keep talking until you ask another question,” Stefani chirps, plopping onto a sofa in MTV’s green room.

No Doubt’s 35-year-old, cellulite-free lead singer has described herself as having been a chubby teenager, but her breathless energy suggests the metabolism of a hummingbird.

“I actually have thought of myself as, like, lazy,” Stefani says. “Like, I love sleeping and eating and watching TV.

“But once I find something that I’m passionate about, I get this crazy drive. Because you hear the clock ticking, and you’re like, ‘Omigod, I want to do all these things, and I have to hurry up because I’m going to die soon.’ “

Certainly, Stefani’s schedule in recent years would challenge the most determined multitasker.

Since No Doubt’s last studio album, “Rock Steady,” was released in late 2001, she has toured extensively, gotten married – to fellow rocker Gavin Rossdale, frontman for the British group Bush – and acted opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator,” opening Dec. 17, in which Stefani plays ‘30s starlet Jean Harlow.

Late last year, she also launched her own fashion line, called L.A.M.B., an acronym for “Love Angel Music Baby.”

That’s also the title of the latest product of Stefani’s relentless drive: a new CD. Released Tuesday, it’s her first album not featuring the three other members of her multi-platinum-selling rock band.

“I can’t really call it a solo project, because it’s so collaborative,” Stefani says. No Doubt bassist and co-songwriter Tony Kanal, Stefani’s onetime boyfriend, is a contributor, as is tunesmith du jour Linda Perry (Pink, Christina Aguilera), who teamed up with Stefani for the single “What You Waiting For?”

Other co-writers, producers and musicians appearing on “Love” constitute a contemporary pop/hip-hop wish list, sprinkled with names harking back to the new wave and R&B that shaped Stefani’s youth: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Dallas Austin, Dr. Dre, Nellee Hooper, The Neptunes, Outkast’s Andre 3000, New Order’s Bernard Sumner and Prince cohorts Wendy and Lisa.

“It’s a nice name-dropping situation,” Stefani says. “I wanted to make a record inspired by the feeling of all that fun, melodic dance music from the ‘80s, but to work with people who are in the club today.”

She concedes that recording “Love” was more daunting than she had anticipated.

“After 17 years of being in this little comfort zone with my best friends, I had to walk into a room with these people I hardly knew and totally admired,” she says. “It was like, ‘OK, I’ll take my clothes off. I know you totally have expectations of me, but let’s get intimate.’ It was horrifying, but once you get over that hump and the song comes out, you have this little thing that you made together, and it’s there forever.”

That Stefani would describe her creative process in such terms seems fitting for a self-confessed “girly-girl” who thrives in male company.

“I love that contradiction of being feminine but playing in the boys’ treehouse,” she says. “My whole life’s been like that.”

Her fellow players on “Love” encouraged Stefani to explore her womanhood, and on tunes such as “Bubble Pop Electric” and the Asian-influenced “Harajuku Girls” she tries on different voices.

“Usually, I write about whatever I’m inspired by that day,” she says. “But I also got to play characters here and there, which added a nice balance.”

More film roles may also be part of Stefani’s future, though she stresses that she has only a couple of lines in “Aviator,” in a scene where her Harlow appears with DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes.

“I definitely got my feet wet, and I got to do it in the big pool. And everyone was so amazing and welcoming, from Leonardo to John C. Reilly to Jude Law. … There I go, name-dropping again.”

And when it comes to No Doubt, Stefani insists that “the band is totally still together. Tony was very involved in my record, and we put a greatest-hits record out.

“When you are in a relationship that many years, you have to recharge the batteries. Now we can start flirting about making songs together again.”