HOLLAND TAYLOR SHE BRINGS SOME PUNCH TO 'POWERS' COOL TV ACTRESS by Alan Carter

TV and stage actress Holland Taylor, now starring as haughty, racist, power- mad Margaret Powers, wife of a befuddled senator (played by John Forsythe), in NBC's Norman Lear comedy The Powers That Be, finds it amusing that she is apparently so well suited to play iron maidens. "Because in my personal life," she explains, "I can really be such a wimp. I'm none of those things. Most of ; the time I think of myself as a horse's ass!"

The Philadelphia-born Taylor, single, 49, and given to tooling around L.A. in a nifty white Mazda Miata, has made something of a name for herself playing brittle babes:

On the early-'80s cult favorite Bosom Buddies, she was boss to Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari; on the now-defunct soap The Edge of Night, she even went so far as to kill herself to frame her husband (now that's one tough cookie); and she has also brought her will-of-steel persona to films (including Romancing the Stone) and Broadway plays (most notably several A.R. Gurney works).

But it's her Margaret Powers that takes the biscuit-and makes Nancy Reagan look like a nice lady in a Galanos suit. "I love playing someone who just skates by and does anything she wants," says Taylor, who readily agreed to read several times for the role, something another actress of her stature might have found insulting. "I have friends who can't believe I still have to audition for things," she says, laughing, "but this is without a doubt the most wonderful opportunity I've ever had in television-despite the fact I'm playing this matron in her 60s probably not the smartest career move. I'm still thinking to myself, 'You're such an a --hole.'"

Oh, and another thing: Taylor insists that the character is not based on the former First Lady. "Margaret goes way beyond Nancy," she explains. "This woman just plows through life. I based her more on Marie Antoinette-a woman who says, 'Let them eat cake' because she assumes they have cake."

She plows, all right: In the debut episode, Margaret, after finding a dust ball, hauled off and slapped her maid. Many TV critics found the scene disturbing (although not so disturbing that they didn't otherwise love the whole Powers family; the show has been renewed for fall, when it will air Fridays at 8:30 p.m.). Anyway, Holland dismisses such delicacy: "This is, after all, only a sitcom. It's remarkable, dazzling stuff. But we're not doing Ibsen." That's right; she's doing Norman Lear. Taylor-made.