But MacLaine caught something during her monthlong solitary journey that hasn't gone away -- dot-com fever. "Things occur to you when you're walking alone for a month," she says. "I want to spiritualize the Web and the whole interchange between learning and technology." That's where ShirleyMacLaine.com comes in.

Recently launched, it's her very own spiritual Web portal, which she says answers the public's raging "hunger for spiritual subjects" -- and features everything from "the best footage of UFOs" to a chat board about "pet spirituality."

But that's only one item on the actress's list of things to do before she moves on to her next life. MacLaine's also directing her first feature film and taking her spiritual act on the road. A few days ago she paused in the middle of juggling projects to talk with Salon.

One of the first things you did when you got back from your trek was direct your first film, "Bruno," with Gary Sinise and Kathy Bates ...

Yeah. It's the story of a little boy who's growing up in a Catholic environment and who has contact with angels. He has a father cop, played by Gary, and a mother who weighs 500 pounds and is a dressmaker. Because the mother is a dressmaker and he talks to angels, the little boy wears dresses to his spelling bee contests and it gets everyone upset. He wins the National Catholic Spelling Bee Contest, because he's a little intellectual, and the reward is he goes to Rome to meet the pope -- who is also wearing a dress. So it's kind of up my alley -- with a lot of these spiritual things and funny, too.

You also spoke with angels during your journey. Was it the spiritual aspect that attracted you to the project in the first place?

That and the identity of a little kid and how he's trying to find himself. He believes in these angels at the same time that he's having such problems on Earth. It's a darling story, and a very good little movie, I think.

Is directing something you always wanted to do?

Not really. I just wanted to have the experience of fulfilling my own vision.

What about the Web site, how did you get started on that?

Well, you know, when you walk over 10 hours a day for 30 days, you begin to realize some spiritual aspects inside you that you didn't know were there. I got in touch with a lot of past-life experiences.

And when I got back, I realized that I should be sharing some of this so I wrote the book. Then after the book was released, I saw that the hunger for spiritual subjects and how to go within oneself and how to meditate and how to align yourself with your own power was very strong.

So I put up this Web site that has information on everything from astrology to prophesy to numerology to dream interpretation to chi energy to ESP, reincarnation, UFOs and crop circles. And I've gotten, I don't know, over 5 million hits, because people are extremely interested in these subjects.

I understand you're now planning to take your spirituality on the road and give seminars around the country?

Yes. I did them in the '80s, and now I've decided to start them up again so I can share with people all the things that I've learned relating to how to get in touch with the higher self, how to align the chakras. I'll teach them what chakras are, because they're basically energy centers, which are the organs of the soul.

And when you align yourself with your mind, body and spirit, the power becomes so incredibly productive that you know what your destiny is.

How do you mean?

Oh lord, people cry and sob and forgive their worst enemy and understand why their mother is treating them like this and why did this husband do that to them and the children. And they begin to get in touch with whatever it was in the past that created this drama in the present.

And you know, I had people at the seminars I did in the '80s who were literally paralytic when they came and, at the end of the weekend, walked out.

No!

Yeah!

Come on.

They did. Several of them did, but this one got up and testified to the whole thing about how she had learned to heal herself within.

Come on!

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