Who knew Felicity Huffman before "Desperate Housewives" fame? Well, writer/director Duncan Tucker, who cast her as the lead in "Transamerica," for which she won a Golden Globe last week.

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Not long ago, first-time writer/director Duncan Tucker found himself in hyperdrive, trying to finish filming his tiny indie road movie "Transamerica" so his lead actress could return to Hollywood and make a TV pilot.

"Drat it," he says he thought at the time. "A stupid pilot. Who cares about a pilot?"

Eventually, Tucker did care. A lot. The unheralded, in-the-way TV pilot was ABC's "Desperate Housewives." His actress: Felicity Huffman.

In short order, Huffman has become a household name. In September, she won a lead-actress-in-a-comedy-series Emmy for "Housewives," and last week she won a Golden Globe for best actress in a drama movie for "Transamerica."

"Housewives" has become a marketing bonus for Tucker's film, which, frankly, would otherwise have been more than a tough sell for mainstream audiences.

In "Transamerica," Huffman strides with a mixture of tentativeness and dogged determination in a dress. Underneath that dress, tucked inside her plethora of undergarments, is a very present and very prosthetic male organ.

That's because Huffman plays Bree, a male-to-female transgender living out the final days before scheduled surgery will complete her physical transformation. She practices her speaking voice, finding the proper and higher lilt from her larynx. She works, making routine telemarketing calls.

But she's also forced to re-examine her life and family dynamics after a startling discovery: She's the father of a troubled son whom she never knew she had from an earlier relationship.

Huffman, whose Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated husband William H. Macy ("Fargo") serves as one of the film's producers, is on many shortlists for a best-actress Oscar nomination.

In an era in which Hollywood routinely celebrates female youth and easily discards middle-age actresses, Huffman's career has taken off in her 40s.

"It happens to be very serendipitous that it happened this way, but I'm grateful," says Huffman, who turned 43 last month.

Part of the critical acclaim for her film performance rests in how she developed Bree's soul through the character's delicate and breathy speaking voice.

"I hope people hear in the voice an unsettledness, loneliness, stagnance and a haunted quality," Huffman says by phone to Atlanta from New York. "What I hope is that she sounds like she's striving, that she hasn't arrived, that she hasn't felt comfortable in her voice. That every time she opens her mouth she feels a big bull's-eye is painted on her forehead."

Tucker first saw Huffman perform onstage in David Mamet's "The Cryptogram" about 10 years ago in New York.

"She just always struck me as this actress with compelling intelligence and presence," he said during a visit to Atlanta when "Transamerica" was first screened at November's Out on Film, the local gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender film festival. "When I was writing this, I knew I needed a transformative actress. Somebody who could do a Meryl Streep thing and completely disappear into a role and, ultimately, sort of come out of a cocoon. I had an instinct that Felicity could do that. And, boy, she knocked my socks off."

Huffman was on a break at the first table-script-reading for the "Desperate Housewives" pilot when she learned that "Transamerica" would be her movie.

"To try and unravel the conundrum of me being a woman playing a man becoming a woman is delicious," she says. "And to be a woman playing a transgendered woman, I don't think it's been done before."

Plenty of movie performers have done various twists on gender roles. Linda Hunt won a supporting-actress Oscar playing a man in 1982's "The Year of Living Dangerously." Actor Jaye Davidson received an Oscar nomination for 1992's "The Crying Game," playing a transvestite.

More recently, Hilary Swank won a best-actress Oscar for 1999's "Boys Don't Cry," playing real-life Teena Brandon, a female-to-male transsexual who called himself Brandon Teena.

Until "Housewives" hit, Huffman was one of those talented actresses who fell just under the radar. She appeared in a few movies — as one of Alan Dershowitz's student staffers in "Reversal of Fortune"; as a TV game-show employee in "Magnolia" — and for two seasons co-starred in the ABC comedy "Sports Night" with Peter Krause and Josh Charles.

It was a time she battled eating disorders and depression, but eventually she overcame body-image issues.

"It ended because I had children," she says. "Isn't that odd? It's not like children make your body better. And it's not that I went, 'Oh, the miracle of birth.' I had two kids right in a row. And, I don't know, it was alchemy. After getting pregnant and then gaining weight and having the baby, I just loved my body after that."

Count her as one desperate American woman who rediscovered life in her 40s.

"I did," she says. "I mean, I had a fantastic life before and I am from a wonderful family, but I've got to say, this last year or two has been pretty great."