Lights, Camera...CUT!

Thursday March 21, 2002 10:25 AM EST

Cyndi Lauper, as the world well knows, is a girl who just wants to have fun. So when, a few years back, the Grammy-award-winning singer got the chance to open for Cher on her sold-out Believe tour, Lauper didn't think twice: Pop's punk princess packed up her guitar, her purple minidress and, oh yes, her 18-month-old son Declyn. The only thing she forgot, it turns out, was her better judgment. "It was terrible," says Lauper, 48, of her three-month stint playing rock-star mom. "I was on the bus trying to pump and nurse and the kid is being knocked around. Every time the bus moves a little, you move a lot. I thought I could drag him all over with me," she says, "but it wasn't working out."

And so, Lauper came to the realization that sooner or later hits every working mother who has passed up a plum job to be with her child: You can't have it all (or, at least, not all at the same time). In a world where performers target the glow of stardom with the determination of heat-seeking missiles, an increasingly long list of the biggest names in showbiz -- including Celine Dion, Demi Moore, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster -- no longer want to. In the enviable financial position to be able to Just Say No, some celebs, such as former MTV whiz kid Tabitha Soren, give up working altogether. Others, including Sissy Spacek -- who took a break from life on her Virginia farm to film her Oscar-nominated turn in In the Bedroom -- just slow down. Whatever the logistics, though, the logic is the same.

"At the end of the day it's about women wanting balance," says producer Lynda Obst, who got Bening to star in 1998's The Siege with offers of on-set daycare and a special play trailer for her kids. "What it feels like is, 'I'm not going on 100 percent psycho-drive just to get work, work, work. I'm only going to do the stuff that has value because I love my family and I'm just as happy staying home as working.' "

Happier, even. Single mom and Panic Room star Foster, 39, recently closed down Egg Pictures, her 12-year-old production company, and tries to limit herself to acting in one film every two years. As she told Premiere in March of her desire to spend time with sons Charles, 3, and Kit, 6 months, "Raising them is so much more interesting than anything else I do."