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From the first moment Jeanette Burmeister appears in "The Full Monty," the audience knows this is a woman who has lived a little.

There she is, her shaggy head in her beaten- down hands, sitting behind an old upright piano, looking every bit the weary stage veteran. Then she lifts her head and speaks.

"You talkin' to me?" Burmeister asks in a rasp, somewhere between the sounds of Edith Bunker and Travis Bickle. A few moments later she adds, "I'm ready to rock 'n' roll."

And just like that, you sense that the crowd's favorite character has arrived. The reasons for the audience's love affair with Jeanette include her spunk (she is thrice divorced and ready to jettison No. 4) and, even more, the expert comedian bringing the role to life: the 70-something character actress Kathleen Freeman, who, like the salty old piano player she portrays, seems to have been just about everywhere and worked with just about everyone.

The proverbial veteran of stage, screen and television, Ms. Freeman has had a career spanning more than 50 years, from a one-line turn as a Brooklyn schoolgirl in the 1948 film-noir classic "The Naked City" to her current gig in the musical "Monty" on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theater.

It is a role that the show's creators, the composer David Yazbek and the playwright Terrence McNally, added late in the writing process. It does not exist in the 1997 movie about six hard-luck, soft- bodied male strippers that inspired the Broadway musical. But Ms. Freeman said she immediately understood the part, a character whom she refers to as "the seventh Monty."

"It's the kind of character that not everybody was right in tune with," she said on a recent chilly matinee afternoon. "But she's been around, and God knows I have."

Ms. Freeman's résumé is peppered with the names of famous movies, and names of the stars that made them that way. Among the classics — and classic stars — on her curriculum vitae: "Singin' in the Rain" (she played Jean Hagen's frustrated voice coach); "The Far Country," with James Stewart; "The Nutty Professor," with Jerry Lewis; and "North to Alaska," in which she played a drunken Swede with John Wayne. ("I had a great accent," she said, doing it again. "Didn't I?")

Her linguistic talents notwithstanding, Ms. Freeman's true specialty has always been her deadpan, a talent once described by Walter Kerr in The New York Times as her ability to "sit on a line, to isolate it and nail it to the floor."

It is a skill that, if her recent Broadway fans can be trusted, seems to have lost none of its bite despite a half-century of use.

"I think I'm a living example of the fact that you don't have to be in every inch of a film or play to be important to it," she said matter-of- factly. "And let's be candid here: I never felt any great personal beauty. I guess I was awfully pretty at some point, but funny was always my book."

True enough, Ms. Freeman may not be Garbo, but with a sneaky smile, a friendly, frizzy head of graying hair and a sharper wit than most leading ladies have, she definitely makes better company. Her manner is part wiseacre and part wise old aunt; during an hourlong interview, she offered opinions on everything from show business to her particular "avidness for life." She rarely laughs at her own jokes; that's the audience's job, after all.

But more than anything, Ms. Freeman is an old-style actress, with all the class and custom that implies. Asked what her favorite role was, she responded, "The next one." Asked what she thought of her current show, she said, "I think Mr. McNally has made a great work of this."

She refuses to give her exact age, for fear of its connotations and disputes several film reference books that say she is 80. "I used to lie about my age, making myself older for roles," she scoffed. "And they took me seriously."

Ms. Freeman's fierce addiction to the footlights probably is not her fault. The only child of a husband- and-wife vaudeville team, Dixon and Freeman, she grew up on the road, performing alongside her parents in the dying days of her family's song- and-dance act. "I would sing a song like I knew what I was doing," she said. "Apparently I didn't."

After the act folded, Ms. Freeman ended up in California, where she eventually attended the University of California at Los Angeles, studying music. There she made her first foray into plays after a classmate begged her to appear in a production of a Roman classic. Ms. Freeman said she could not remember the exact title, but she did remember the exact moment she first spoke.

"A terrible thing happened," she said, in mock horror. "I got a laugh."

Smitten, she began to pursue acting full time and soon began performing with the Circle and the Players Ring Theaters in Los Angeles. In 1948 she went to an audition and landed a bit part in "The Naked City," the true-life story of a brutal New York killing. Ms. Freeman played a girl on the subway whose only line — "Didja read about the bathtub murder?" — was uttered while leaning over the shoulder of Don Taylor, one of the leads.

"If you don't remember your first line in a major movie," Ms. Freeman said, "there's something wrong with you."

A star wasn't exactly born, but the coming years found Ms. Freeman acting in a flood of Hollywood pictures. From 1951 to 1954, she appeared in no fewer than 27 features, according to the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com). Among these were more than a few winners ("The Affairs of Dobie Gillis," "A Place in the Sun") and a few also- rans ("Jerrico, the Wonder Clown," "The Magnetic Monster").

But her greatest professional affiliation in Hollywood was with Jerry Lewis; she worked on about 10 of his films after he split with his longtime partner, Dean Martin.

"At risk of getting in trouble, we were awfully good together," she said of Mr. Lewis. "He is in the same madcap genre I feel I'm in: clowns and crazy people."

Her stage career, meanwhile, continued to hibernate as film and television roles continued to roll in, including stints on the sitcoms of Donna Reed, Dick Van Dyke and Lucille Ball and on "Hogan's Heroes" (as Frau Linkmeier).

It wasn't until 1978 that Ms. Freeman made it to Broadway, in "13 Rue de l'Amour," Georges Feydeau's classic farce, in which she played Mme. Spritzer, a dissolute countess, alongside Louis Jourdan. Again, Ms. Freeman found herself getting laughs onstage.

She also played in national tours of "Annie," "Deathtrap" and "Woman of the Year" (as a German maid). But she had no idea she might return to Broadway until she received a call last summer from a friend, the actress and singer Jane A. Johnston, who suggested she might be just right for a new musical trying out at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego.

"It was two weeks into rehearsal, and they were still searching about," she said. "I came in to audition on Wednesday and went to work on Monday. That's a marvelous feeling."

The show moved from San Diego to New York in October. Since then, Ms. Freeman has been doing eight shows a week, napping a lot to conserve energy and missing the three cats and one dog she left at home in Los Angeles. (Don't worry, she said, someone is feeding them.)

She never married, she said, "because I don't think anyone would have put up with me," though she also admits to having had a few love interests who went to war and "did not come home."

As for what she might do next, Ms. Freeman said, whatever it is, it certainly won't be retirement.

"I had a good career because I'm sneaky," she said, for once laughing at one of her own comments. "You know how actors are. They're always thinking ahead, always saying, `I don't know if I can get away with 60.' But 65, I think I can do."

The Full Schedule

"The Full Monty" is at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, 230 West 49th Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200. Performances: Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $30 to $85.