By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

It's not easy being a celebrity, as British heartthrob turned cad turned penitent Hugh Grant can testify. But writing about the rich and glamorous can be even harder. Just ask Belinda Luscombe, who has maneuvered through phalanxes of nervous publicists this month to cover Grant's humiliation and subsequent prostration. Since she took over TIME's People section last March, Luscombe, 31, has had to contend with a parade of people who can switch from craving publicity to shunning it in a matter of minutes. "This job has certainly cured me of any desire I may have had to be famous," she says.

Luscombe is no stranger to the ways of Hollywood and Fleet Street. Born in Sydney, she cut her journalistic teeth on the feisty Australian tabloid the Daily Telegraph Mirror. There she learned important lessons about getting the story first and getting it right. "Tabloids don't have the most noble priorities," she says. "But they do throw themselves into the process of gathering news."

She came to the U.S. -- and by a circuitous route to TIME -- after her husband, Jeremy Edmiston, won a scholarship to study architecture in New York City. Within months Luscombe landed a job at FYI, the 55-year-old in-house biweekly that chronicles life at Time Inc. FYI has a small but dauntingly influential readership, including the writers and editors at TIME, People, Sports Illustrated, Life and Entertainment Weekly. Seizing the opportunity with characteristic pluck, Luscombe added sparkle to routine stories about the comings and goings of Time Inc. personnel with a brazen, witty tone that caught the eye of Jim Gaines, TIME's managing editor.

In her new role as TIME's People writer, Luscombe found that dogging celebrities can be a bit more trying than debriefing journalists. When she asked Anthony Hopkins if he could find any similarities in his portrayals of cannibal Hannibal Lecter and ex-President Richard Nixon, the actor abruptly hung up-leaving her without a usable quote. "It seemed like he was having a bad day," says Luscombe, who decided to kill the piece. "I figured, Why pick on him?"

Her most unusual interview, as it happens, was also her first. She had to telephone actor Tony Curtis to ask why he had posed in underwear and makeup for photographer Annie Leibovitz. "Belinda!" Curtis answered. "I love your work!" It was an odd salutation, since none of Luscombe's stories had yet appeared in Time. But perhaps he was just prescient.