At age 31, with two eventful decades of show-business experience behind her and the giddy prospect of full-fledged stardom in front of her, Ann Jillian is not inclined to be coy about her ambitions. "I want" she says with bubbly forthrightness, "to be at least what Loni Anderson is, and I hope to transcend that and do some successful feature films, as well as singing and dancing in Las Vegas. I've been in this business so long. I've seen the ups and downs and I know that I have the talent. People have told me from the time I was a little girl that I have talent, and now I can see it myself. I don't have to be shy about it."

So there.

Blithely she acknowledges that the thought of becoming a big star routinely ricochets around her mind--"at least three times a day." The thought, as a matter of fact, makes her clap her hands and chortle and bounce in her chair, right in front of a reporter.

All of this sounds a bit audacious for someone who's in a series that has had a rocky history and faces an uncertain future. Set in a posh restaurant, with Ann as one of five eye-catching waitresses, It's a Living got yanked off the air last season for revamping. The series will return this fall under a new name, minus two of its original stars, Susan Sullivan and Wendy Schaal; and with one new if familiar face: Louise Lasser of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman fame. "Louise is a great addition" says Ann, "and my character has been revised and I hope will be playing a larger role. We'll be getting out of the restaurant more, combining more comic silliness, which I love, with the problems and issues the characters face."

But what about ABC's rescheduling of the revamped show opposite the second half hour of series killer Dallas? "Well, I have another series project waiting for me if this one doesn't make it. I can't talk about it at this point. But I would have something else to go into and it would be my show. You have to be ready for whatever might happen in this business, and I am."

She was, indeed, when It's a Living got shelved. "While we were on hiatus", says Ann, "I worked up a nightclub act that's a gem and got a big response when I performed it in New York." Now, sitting in her dressing room, she waves a bogus newspaper that a fan has sent her bearing the headline: ANN JILLIAN NAMED '80's NO. 1 SEX SYMBOL. "I love it" says Ann Jillian. Dressed for rehearsals in a baggy black sweat suit that hides her voluptuous figure, Ann pauses in the gleeful appraisal of her future and laughs at her own chutzpah: "I'm really pretty humble for being as wonderful as I am."

The thing is, there's no lack of support for her estimation of her potential. As Barrie Youngfellow, who plays waitress Jan puts it: "Trying to stop Ann's momentum would be like stepping in the path of a truck."

Even less reserved is Joyce Selznick, a veteran talent scout who's helped to push along the careers of folks like Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Richard Dreyfuss. Now Jillian's manager, Selznick insists: "Ann is going to be a superstar, regardless of what happens with the show." Selznick can still work herself into a snit when she talks about how long it took a network to "discover" Ann Jillian. "Here's an unlimited quadruple-threat girl--she can sing and dance, do comedy and drama--and nobody in TV did anything about her, even though she was right under their noses, when she performed in "Sugar Babies" in Los Angeles.

"Sugar Babies", the Mickey Rooney-Ann Miller burlesque musical, featured Jillian as a soubrette and eventually went to Broadway. Selznick found Ann there as part of a national talent hunt for ABC and dispatched her back to L.A. for a screen test. That led to an audition for the role of Cassie, the worldly, wisecracking, un-dumb blonde.

A bit ruefully, Ann can joke about this latest "discovery" of her, keeping in mind that the first came 20 years ago. In 1961 she played a round-faced Little Bo-Peep opposite Annette Funicello in Disney's "Babes in Toyland," following up as Natalie Wood's sister Dainty June in the movie version of "Gypsy". It looked as if "Gypsy" producer Mervyn LeRoy was right in describing her as "a most gifted performer", certain to enjoy "a rewarding future in show business". But as a teen-ager she was stymied by a classic case of child-actor growing pains. "I had the body of a leading lady" she recalls, "but my face looked much younger. I started getting rejected for parts, and it crushed me."

The daughter of resourceful Lithuanian parents-- they escaped the Communist invasion during World War II by sneaking out of their country on bicycles--Ann had happily followed her stage-struck mother's promptings to pursue an acting career. In fact, a primary reason the family settled in Los Angeles was so that Ann could grow up right in the heart of the industry. Everything went according to plan until her teen-age slump. For the first time, self-doubt seeped in. "I figured, well, I just don't have it anymore. I got hurt and intimidated."

Dropping out in the '60's for her meant abandoning show business for three years to study psychology in college and work in a department store. She got back into performing when a friend, Debra Shulman, prodded her into forming Jillian and Shulman ("Sounds like a meat-packing company"), a singing duo that became an opening act for Robert Goulet and other headliners. "It was during that time", Ann says, "that the confidence I'd had as a kid was restored."

Later, on her own, she toured with Sammy Cahn's "Words and Music" winding up in Chicago, where major changes took place for her both personally and professionally. First, she met Andy Murcia, a muscular, plain-spoken police sergeant who was moonlighting as head of security at her hotel. "It's not very glamorous when you're in a strange city with no one to talk to. So one night after a show I was lonesome and went into a club in the hotel to dance, for therapy, That's where I met Andy. He was so nice, and I figured her could be trusted since he was a policeman. He became a chum. Then it turned into romance. A whirlwind romance. Three months later we were married." And before long Murcia turned in his badge to become, until recently, her manager.

Meanwhile, Ann moved on to "Goodnight Ladies" with Mickey Rooney, who then recommended her for the tour of "Sugar Babies". In that role she gave new meaning to the old expression "The kid's a trouper"--her big number was a ballad sung while 14 pigeons flew on stage and rested on various parts of her anatomy, regularly soiling her costume and convulsing audiences while she sang on, oblivious of the damage. "On Broadway, one got me right on the nose" she says. "I'm told that what the pigeons did to me is considered good luck. If that's true, I'm set for life."

In the dressing room, contemplating her current good luck while her husband sifts through her fan mail, Ann is still mindful of the quirks of the business.

She sighs and suggests that her part in "Sugar Babies" was cut back after her initial glowing reviews because the producer thought star Ann Miller might feel overshadowed. She sighs again and suggests she might have won the choice Marilyn Monroe part played by Catherine Hicks in the 1980 TV-movie "Marilyn: The Untold Story", were it not that "my series-development contract took precedence". She adds, "I'm extremely proud of the screen test I did as Marilyn. It shows what I can do with dramatic scenes. I know I don't look like a serious actress, but I am. And I know that will only be proved as the years go by and people see my work, but I'll do it. I'm a survivor and a workaholic, and I've got this streak of Lithuanian stick-to-itiveness. I get down in the dumps sometimes, but I don't quit. If somebody pushes me back, I fight that much harder to pull out all the stops and stand out."

On a series with a female ensemble, the potential exists for squabbles over one or another's preeminence, particularly when one has neon-sign features and is getting most of the ballyhoo. Producers Tony Thomas and Joel Zwick swear the problem has been avoided by carefully writing up for all of the characters, and Barrie Youngfellow notes: "Ann certainly can stand out in any crowd, but what we respect is that she has the goods to back it up."

Everyone on the set agrees that Ann is not like the rather cynical Cassie. "Ann is sweet and pixieish", says Zwick, "In fact, sometimes I have to tell her not to let Cassie get too cute". Says Youngfellow, "For all of the hard knocks Ann's had, she's still an open, vulnerable person."

Ann lowers her voice for Cassie's one-liners and borrows a bit from Mae West and Eve Arden in the delivery. "There's some Barbara Stanwyck in there too, from her semitough roles. I've watched th masters and I know I still have things to learn, polishing to do."

Reminded that some critics had szied up It's a Living as merely an excuse for exploiting plunging necklines and jiggle, Ann contends: "Any time you put five attractive females in revealing outfits, some people will immediately say that; but there is substance to the writing on this series. Anyway, I'm tired of hearing complaints about T-and-A. I mean, we're women with figures, we're attractive and we bring in male viewers. So what?"

In contrast to that casual attitude, she insists she's really "an old- fashioned girl" who was raised in a strict home and still sets Sundays aside for dinner with her parents. "When I was a teen-ager, I was Little Miss Gloves while my peers were wearing jeans and doing all the things associated with the change in life styles in the '60's. I couldn't say "Hey, man" to save my life. And my mother was very strict--once she refused to let a boy see me because he drove a van. In her Lithuanian accent, she called it "A shhtinking sex pit on veels".

Aside from the Sunday dinners, Ann is "totally immersed in my career. Anybody who wants to make big strides has to be". In addition to the series, that means most nights and Saturdays are devoted to doing interviews, talk shows, photo sessions and publicity appearances.

Meanwhile, her husband has adapted to role-reversal: doing the cooking, laundry, shopping and errands. Good-naturedly, the one-time vice detective says "it beats being a policeman. I was already set to leave taht job when Ann came along." Another task for him is keeping after Ann to hold down the pounds on her 5-foot-8-inch frame. "Yes", she says, "I've been a pudge-o at various times in my life. So, on orders from Tony Thomas, I'm on a tough diet and so far I've lost two dress sizes". Laughing, she adds: "I'm losing in some places I'd rather not. How can I say this?...Well, it's my bust. Now isn't that a terrible thing for a sex symbol to have to go through?".