NEW YORK -- The General Lee wore a shiny coat of orange paint. Jessica Simpson chose a silky, floral Dolce & Gabbana dress, almost as tight as some of the Duke boys' fixes in "The Dukes of Hazzard."

Warner Bros. Pictures Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke in "Dukes of Hazzard." Click photo for larger image.

The car and the star turned heads in Manhattan, where the 1969 Dodge Charger was parked outside, next to a Park Avenue hotel, and Simpson was inside, sprinting on high heels among rooms of interviewers. Her fuel: a can of Red Bull energy drink, a lipstick-stained straw daintily tucked inside.

Simpson makes her acting debut in "Dukes" playing Daisy Duke, the role made famous in 1979 by Catherine Bach. Yes, she wears the microscopic shorts known as Daisy Dukes. This time, they span just 10 inches from the waistband to the upper thigh.

"I just didn't want butt cheeks hanging out, that was very important to me, so if they had to be a little lower-waisted, you gotta meet in the middle. It's like marriage, you got to compromise with the director," Simpson said.

To do justice to the Daisy Dukes, Simpson exercised two hours a day and eliminated sugar and fried foods from her diet. She also took stunt driving lessons and fight training.

Director Jay Chandrasekhar (not exactly an unbiased observer) rates Simpson's performance as a four on a scale of one to five. That's a far cry from her audition, when she was nervous and quiet. "I said, 'Well, we'll give you another chance to come back and try it, but you're going to have to go bigger than that.' "

She returned for a screen test. "You looked at her on the monitor and she was glowing. She had that big mane of blond hair and these little shorts on," Chandrasekhar said. "She's got a certain charisma she was just exuding although her first few takes were a little small."

The director told her to smile, have a little fun, go a little bigger. "And the next take was phenomenal and the next take after that was better and better and better, and I said, 'OK, she can do it.' "

As she became comfortable with her experienced co-stars, the director says she started to "grow and sort of flower."

Daisy is a supporting role in a movie also featuring Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Burt Reynolds, Willie Nelson, Joe Don Baker and Lynda Carter.

"It was a conscious decision, that I wanted to be part of an ensemble," 25-year-old Simpson said. "I didn't want the pressure of carrying the movie. ... [Daisy] was a great first role for me. Do I think I can carry a movie? I really do hope so, I mean, I believe in myself, I think I can."

On her first day, Reynolds greeted her with an old-fashioned gift.

"He welcomed me into the movie business by giving me a sapphire daisy ring. It was so nice. Burt Reynolds! I can't imagine how many movie sets he's been on and to think about, 'This is her first movie, I want to make her feel comfortable.' "

Although Bach was famously a brunette, Simpson said no one ever suggested she dye her blond hair, although a wig does factor into the movie. The goal was to maintain the spirit of the TV show, while updating it. "It's reintroducing it, but at least the General Lee's the same."

Simpson revisited the series, several seasons of which are on DVD, before the audition. "Once I nailed the audition, I was confident as Daisy Duke. All I needed to do was work out. There's some Southern women I know I definitely would think of in the back of my mind."

The Texas native is no stranger to the limelight, given her singing career, the MTV series chronicling her life with husband Nick Lachey, and the couple's TV specials.

You can't walk by a newsstand without seeing Simpson on magazine covers, often with headlines screaming that her marriage is in jeopardy. Chandrasekhar said that once he spent time around Simpson, he realized how much of that is a lie.

Take a photo of Simpson and Scott playing pool in Baton Rouge. The caption said they were canoodling when the director said he was just out of the frame. "They made up some bull---- about them hooking up that night."

Simpson says of the tabloid torrent, "I don't read it. ... I don't think a lot of people even believe it when they do read it. People, unfortunately, want to see people fail.

"My marriage is rock-solid. I know where Nick is and what he's doing and what he's doing tonight. He's my husband. We talk on the phone all the time if we're apart, so I never question him. I would not have married him if I didn't trust him."

Still, she says it's wonderful that the "Newlyweds" cameras are gone. "I love not having cameras in our house. We were married for six months before we even started the show. We're about to be three years. We've been together for almost eight. Do we feel like newlyweds anymore? No, we're old school."

And her childhood prepared her for the scrutiny, in ways she couldn't have imagined.

"I was a preacher's daughter. I lived in a fishbowl. I had to deal with gossip and rumors and mean girls at a very young age, so I think I was prepared. That was just working me and getting me ready for now."

Despite her familiarity with fame, some things even Simpson couldn't anticipate. While she was promoting "Dukes," the New York Daily News published a story headlined "Swag-nificent try" about a New Jersey woman who claimed to be the star's rep (even setting up an e-mail account in a real assistant's name) to score freebies.

"It's strange to be used like that and not even know about it. This had been going on for such a long time and when the FBI arrested her, she had, like, $12,000 worth of merchandise. I felt bad because I didn't want all these companies thinking I was greedy and wanted all this free stuff, and my assistant was so upset, because she's from the South and she has great relationships with so many different companies."

The scammer was caught when she requested a product connected to the celebrity's fragrance and body-care line, Dessert. "She called and asked for boxes and boxes of LipFusion for me! The girl's in jail."

Simpson, who is readying an album called "And the Band Played On," doesn't sing in the movie although her version of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin' " is on the sound track and the focus of a heat-seeking video.

Producer Bill Gerber says, "I'm sure as a producer and Warner Bros., we would have been thrilled to have Jessica Simpson break into song somewhere, but we had to resist, to just keep the movie real and credible and not turn it into some sensationalistic pop effort."

A Christian group has criticized Simpson for the sexy rendition of the Nancy Sinatra tune but she says, "I've had to deal with that. I couldn't even sign a Gospel deal because at 14, people thought I was too sexy. This is not new. What I've realized is, you know what, that's just not really a Christian-like thing to do, to go into the press and say that about somebody."

Simpson insists she's no Daisy when it comes to using beauty or sexuality to get what she wants. "I would be way too shy to drop a jacket and just have a bikini underneath. Honestly, Jessica Simpson, that's just not her."