JERRYHall could be the kind of person who gives celebrity a good name. Always sunny, always made up to the nines, she looks like she's having a good time. Her daughter, Elizabeth, says that Jerry likes gardening but we don't really know about that. We just know the six foot figure, the permanent mane of blonde hair, the scarlet grin.

Last week, it was reported that Jerry Hall will appear next year in a production of Tennessee Williams's play Sweet Bird Of Youth at the Gate theatre in Dublin. If she does, we won't be one bit surprised. Celebrity theatre arrived at the Gate some time ago, a sort of panto for grownups. Jerry has already completed an 11-month run as Mrs Robinson in a theatre production of The Graduate, in London and New Yo r k .

But the Gate had better give Jerry a medical. She pulled out of two theatre productions in London within 12 months . . . My Darlin' Janey at the King's Head in Islington in 2004, and High Society in 2005. Glandular fever was cited on both occasions.

However, she stuck with The Graduate, which required an eight-second nude scene from her. On the first night, pandemonium broke out as photographers rushed to record the moment. "I was annoyed, " said Jerry subsequently. "Playboy had offered me a million dollars to pose nude, which I turned down, and these guys were getting it for free."

This is the kind of remark that endears Jerry to us all. In a 36-year career, she has played the down-home Texas girl to perfection. She has brought her enthusiasm to her new career as an actress . . . entering the Guinness Book of Records when she appeared in six different West End productions in one night.

That was part of a campaign to encourage people to go to the theatre . . .

although whether it succeeded in doing so is a moot point. Jerry was whisked from one theatre to another on the back of a motorbike. "It was fun, " she said.

At one time, she and Mick Jagger took advice from the Kaballah sect, of which Madonna is fond. However Jerry's good sense prevailed. "We couldn't go through the Door Of Miracles unless we gave the Kaballah people 10% of our money, so we couldn't study it any more, " she told the American magazine Index. "It's not like we fell out with them or anything. They're very nice people. I love mysticism . . . it's such fun."

Her eldest daughter with Jagger, Elizabeth Scarlett, is now a model herself. Elizabeth has an eightyear contract with Lancome and is currently to be seen wearing a red dress for Marks & Spencer. Jerry does not seem to have had any reservations at all about sending a teenage girl into the modelling industry with no thirdlevel education to speak of.

Her own modelling career began when she left Mesquite, Texas, at the age of 16. Her suitcase was full of clothes that her mother had copied from Frederick's of Hollywood, and she was headed for Paris. As a teenager, Jerry was launched into what is euphemistically called the party lifestyle of the '70s modelling industry. It is somehow touching that she has no reservations about sending Elizabeth, so much more privileged, into the same career. Her support for her daughter is kind of endearing: "Mick was against it at first, but he's okay now. Elizabeth made $60,000 in one week . . . what can you say?"

In her youth, Jerry Hall briefly trained as an actress, but as she herself has said, modelling proved too lucrative to abandon. She has never been a great beauty, but rather epitomised the all-American girl, with no breasts to speak of and a golden sheen that is reminiscent of a palomino. Prince Azam of Brunei once sent her a bouquet so enormous that it took two men to carry it to her door.

But while such stunts were good for a laugh, her shrewdness was in attaching herself to a man with a weakness for tall models, and managing to stay with him for more than 20 years through several humiliations, not the least of which came when he claimed that their marriage, in a Hindu ceremony on the island of Bali in 1995, was not legally binding.

The marriage was annulled by the London High Court in 1999.

By now Jerry is secure in her millionaire lifestyle, living with her children in the family home in Richmond, Surrey, with her ex-husband living next door.

At her ex father-in-law's funeral last month, she was part of Jagger's harem:

current girlfriend L'Wren Scott, his first ex-wife, Bianca, and Marsha Hunt. Jagger can afford a harem and money can civilise many arrangements. However, in the past Jerry Hall has said, "My mum was trapped in an abusive marriage and I have repeated her mistakes." This remark would seem to imply that only the economics change.

Of her own father, she has said: "He would come home and hit us and scream at us, and I lived in fear of him throughout most of my childhood." No wonder that Paris seemed a safer place. By 1975, she was modelling for the cover of the Roxy Music album Sirens. It was a hot day on the Welsh coast and the lead singer of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry, helpfully held an umbrella over her. Afterwards, he helped her try to get the blue body paint off. Love blossomed, she said, on the long train journey back to London. In 1979, she left Ferry for Jagger, and stayed with him until she was pregnant with their fourth child, Gabriel. It was then, in 1997, that Luciana Morad, a Brazilian underwear model, came forward to announce that she too was pregnant with Mick Jagger's child. With old Lotharios, it is only the women who change.

The post-Jagger Jerry has appeared in a television programme to turn rough young Americans into suave seducing types. The friends who helped her in this were the wives of Ron Wood and Bill Wyman, and the girlfriend of Bob Geldof, Jeanne Marine. Although she once called Mick Jagger "a lying, cheating, no-good slimeball", she has since said that he is a good father, if a terrible husband.

In a way, it's nice to see that Jerry cannot leave the siren thing behind. And whether or not she appears at the Gate, she is still the global ambassadress for Levitra, a treatment for erectile dysfunction.

C.V.

Born: 2 July 1956, Gonzales, Texas.

One of five daughters, including her twin sister, Terry Jaye. Father a truck driver Married: Yes and no . . . to Sir Mick Jagger. Children Elizabeth, James, Georgia and Gabriel Profession: Actress, model, celebrity In the news: She's the latest big name to set her sights on Dublin's Gate theatre