Lili Taylor has character where most starlets have collagen, emotional makeup where the rest have the kind you buy at Bloomingdale's. "It's not a safe look," the actress, 27, admits. Still, the Chicago-born Taylor has worked consistently since her '88 debut in Mystic Pizza, putting a hypnotic stamp on some offbeat characters in films such as Dogfight and Household Saints. coming up, she plays possibly the screen's first feminist lesbian photojournalist in Robert Altmans' Pret-a-Porter. And- this is so big- she's Edna Ferber in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, about the Algonquin conclave of writers, of whom Ferber disapproved. "I've taken some risks," admits the unconventional diva [who lives with her frequent co-star, Michael Imperioli], "but it's really worked out all right." -MICHAEL MUSTO