A look inside Hollywood and the movies : TRESS TEST : Yul Love Madonna in ‘Snake Eyes’

It’s been more than three weeks since Madonna has caused any kind of public commotion. After the publication of her coffee-table book “Sex” and the ratings squabble involving her film “Body of Evidence,” we came to expect weekly developments. Her last big headline-grabber: ripping up a photo of tabloid and TV movie king Joey Buttafuoco on “Saturday Night Live” a la Sinead O’Connor.

The singer-actress-author is keeping a low profile, sources say, while preparing for Abel Ferrara’s “Snake Eyes.” But according to sources close to the production, Madonna will soon be showing the one part of her body that the public has not seen yet: her scalp.

In “Snake Eyes,” Ferrara’s follow-up to “Bad Lieutenant,” Madonna plays a movie star on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Harvey Keitel and James Russo are the other players in a twisted love triangle that ensues between a director, an actor and an actress while making a “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”-style movie.

In the course of an hour and a half, Madonna will reportedly be beaten up, raped and shorn.

Ferrara, when asked to comment on the star’s impending haircut, laughed and refused to verify whether his leading lady will lose all her hair in the film.

“Let’s just say she’s going to get a radical new hairdo,” he said. Ferrara explains that Madonna’s new ‘do will occur halfway through the film, when Russo decides to try out an act of grooming sadism. “Imagine,” he says, “if Burton went after Liz Taylor’s head with a pair of scissors in ‘Virginia Woolf’ and you’ll get an idea of what we’re going after.”