Courteney Cox had a distinct advantage over the majority of actors in "Masters of the Universe." The character she plays, young Julie Winston, is almost the only human being in the film.

"Julie is not a toy creation and I wasn't running around as some creature with a tail saying things like 'three metrons north,'" laughs the perky brunette. "Because I am from this world and act like a normal Earth teenager would act, I have some fairly realistic scenes in the film."

Cox quickly points out that she had her share of unreal scenes as well -- cuddling with Gwildor in a car and being chased by Skeletor's bounty hunters through a high school gym.

"Relating to the creatures in the action sequences wasn't that difficult," she admits. "When a scene called for me to run, I ran. Getting across emotional sense of what was happening was a bigger challenge.

Giving the audience the idea of what it is like to run headlong into He-Man and Evil-Lyn isn't easy. Making all these weird creatures out to be real is as much my job as it is the actors' who are playing them."

Cox, who was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, is no stranger to playing strange scenes. As the telepath Gloria, Cox spent a fill year reacting to shrinking men and lightning-bolt shooting rock stars on the TV series "Misfits of Science." Most recently, she appeared in the film "Down Twisted."

Cox, however, admits that her big claim to fame remains her role as the girl that Bruce Springsteen pulls out of a concert audience in his "Dancing in the Dark" video.

"I was this naive kid all through the casting process for that video," she says. "Because I basically didn't know what was going on, I wasn't getting nervous and I guess that worked to my advantage."

She went into her "Masters of the Universe" audition with the same attitude. Cox didn't know the character, hadn't read the script and came dressed in a way that made her look too old for the part. Three strikes and you're out? Not on your life.

Directory Gary Goddard took a liking to Cox. "She was fresh, bright and had energy," he says. "She was exactly what I was looking for."

Cox went home, changed her clothes and read the script. She read three more times before she was awarded the part of Julie.

And Courteney Cox feels that "Masters of the Universe" will knock moviegoers and He-Man fans out. "There is a built-in audience for this film," she observes. "Kids go nuts for this kind of movie, so I have no doubts that it will do well."