She Wants to Be More Than a Botticelli Beauty : Television: To counter those who think ‘Raphaelite’ when they see her, Alicia Witt chooses diverse roles--from a bored teen on the sitcom ‘Cybill’ to a killer in the film ‘Fun.’

Meeting Alicia Witt, with her long, shiny, coppery tresses and creamy white skin, only confirms what the camera alludes to: She’s got that “Raphaelite beauty” that she’s tired of hearing about.

More than her looks, it’s Witt’s almost eerie maturity and formality that give her an anachronistic edge. There’s no colloquialism in her speech, few references to pop culture or any moments of awkward insecurity. There are no pauses or spontaneous interruptions. At 20, Witt is stunningly articulate.

Her real-life manner is far removed from her Zoey, the bored teen on the CBS sitcom “Cybill,” and her Bonnie, who, in a “fun-filled frenzy” with her best pal, murders an elderly woman in “Fun,” a movie that begins a one-week run at the Nuart on Sept. 15.

Before the year’s end, Witt will be seen in two more divergent roles: as a dreadlocked juvenile delinquent lesbian lover of a witch (Madonna) in the Quentin Tarantino-produced “Four Rooms,” due out Oct. 6, and as a shy teen, circa 1962, brought out of her shell by a music teacher (Richard Dreyfus) in the expected Christmas release “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

Witt, sipping herbal tea in a coffee shop, says she used to worry that she’d be stereotyped “as very ethereal or heavenly looking. Not heavenly in a vain way, but in a Raphaelite way. . . . People tell me I look like a Botticelli painting, or stepped out of ‘Howards End.’ ”

When told she indeed does, she responds, “It annoys me. The funny thing is, when I first came to L.A. at 15 and was playing piano at the Beverly Wilshire, people would say that all the time. I got so irritated. Then, when I was about 17 or 18, I began doing different kinds of parts to squelch that image.”

What was a 15-year-old doing making a living playing piano? Witt, a native of Worcester, Mass., was a child prodigy.

At 2, Witt was hailed by Good Housekeeping as the magazine’s youngest reader after she sent in a letter. A subsequent article documented her writing and reading to a reporter. At 3, she was reciting Shakespeare from memory. At 7, David Lynch gave her a part in “Dune” and at 10 she was playing piano in a local restaurant.

“I just had a great love of learning,” Witt says with a shrug. She credits the nurturing of her mother, who home-taught her and her younger brother, Ian. Her father was a junior high school science teacher.

Witt passed the high school equivalency exam at 14 and moved to Los Angeles the following year, hoping to fuse a career in music and acting. “My father signed the apartment application and opened an account for me,” she explains.

Witt’s mother--who holds the Guinness Book of World Records distinction of having the longest hair in the world--also lives in Los Angeles now but not with Witt.

“Other articles have made it sound like my mother was more involved in my life than she really is,” the actress says. “She was an integral part of my childhood and I love her very much, but all my career decisions have always been my own.”

Within a year of her arrival, Witt landed a role in “Bodies, Rest & Motion” as an ethereal, mysterious and lonely teen. Then Lynch put her in his “Hotel Room” for HBO.

“Then came ‘Fun,’ ” Witt says gleefully of the movie shot in L.A. during the summer of 1993. “That blew any image of me being really sweet.”

She calls homicidal Bonnie “a wonderful character to play and very challenging.” Her performance earned a special Jury Award at 1994’s Sundance Film Festival.

“Fun” director Rafael Zelinsky spotted Witt playing piano at the Beverly Wilshire. He was mesmerized, watching for nearly three hours before approaching her about the movie.

“There was this unearthly, mystical quality in her,” Zelinsky says. “She has an ancient quality and wisdom, like she’s lived millions of lives before.”

Chuck Lorre, creator and executive producer of “Cybill,” concurs. “She’s incredibly challenging to write for, to write Zoey as bright as she is.”

Witt, who doesn’t have an interest in college, save “for an occasional course or adult school, which might be fun for the social aspect,” still has difficulty “relating to people my own age, since everyone around me has always been so much older.”

She cites her “only friends” as brother Ian, who still lives in Worcester with their father, and her favorite big-band radio station. Since she didn’t go to school, she only saw her peers, she says, during piano recitals.

“I never got to walk down the halls of a high school like I see in the movies, go to a prom, look at boys across the mall, but I was never unhappy.”

For someone as self-motivated as Witt is, working with Madonna on “Four Rooms” was inspiring. “I got the feeling from her that she’ll do anything if it means getting what she wants. I have to say, I admire that a lot, not being afraid of anything.”

She hopes eventually to have the kind of power to generate a film through her name. Zelinsky thinks it’s well within her reach. “She would be a great director, and I could see her with her own production company,” he says.

Lorre predicts, “Alicia won’t take the safe path. Someone with this talent can do anything, frankly. I think she’s going to be a major star.”