From her feature film debut as a coke-snorting mistress in 1990’s Goodfellas to her recurring role as publicist Shauna on HBO’s Entourage, Debi Mazar has made a career out of playing strong, sassy women with New York accents as thick as her eye makeup. Best known to TV audiences as tough-talking legal secretary Denise on both Civil Wars and L.A. Law, Mazar has memorably milked small roles in movies like The Doors, Malcolm X, and Empire Records, but it’s her enviable gig as gal pal Madonna’s makeup artist in the ’80s that first cultivated her gay following.

Now the 45-year-old mother of two is bringing her signature streetwise charm to ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, hoofing it alongside Maksim Chmerkovskiy to hawk her cooking show and new line of beauty products. Still recuperating from a minor neck injury she sustained during last Tuesday’s fox-trot, Mazar took a break from rehearsal to tell Advocate.com about her heavenly gay fans and why -- as sexy as Maks is -- she would’ve preferred a female partner.

Advocate.com: The picture of you wearing a neck brace that you posted on Twitter was reposted on PerezHilton.com  last week. Are you hoping it wins you some sympathy votes?
Debi Mazar: I don’t think people are that sympathetic, quite frankly. My doctors asked me to leave the neck brace on for one night until I had my MRI, so it was doctor’s orders. It’s just a torn neck muscle. I’ve actually had other injuries during the process -- I’ve twisted my ankle, Maksim bruises me everywhere -- but I’m probably the one person who isn’t complaining. I just power through.

You tweeted about some of the disrespectful reader comments on Perez’s post. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to look at those?
Everybody says to me, “Don’t read the blogs,” but because I’m a curious person and I blog myself, I just scrolled down. I realize that half these people are just haters or 12 years old. I feel like saying, “Oh, go put a Disney movie on and leave me alone, you stupid kid.” They’re like, “Who’s Debi Mazar?” I don’t care if you know who I am or not, but if you really want to know, go check IMDB. I don’t write back, though.

Yeah, the comments on his site are notoriously negative.
But Perez himself is actually kind of cool. He knows not to fuck with me and I don’t fuck with him. We’ve actually talked before, and he’s not as bad as people think. He once read me on his website for being sweaty when I was at a cancer benefit. I was wearing a fabulous Gucci dress and it was about 500 degrees out, but I don’t wear antiperspirant because I don’t believe in it -- if you’re going to sweat, you’re going to sweat -- so I was sweating and he dissed me. I told him, “Hon, I came before you and I’m a diva, so there’s no reason to be mean to me.” [Laughs] We giggled about it and now it’s all good.