Audrey Hepburn, who knew fashion and fashion designers, once told Shirley MacLaine, who didn’t, that she really ought to play Coco Chanel.

MacLaine protested. “Coco Chanel was little and scrunched over and very short.”

Yes, Hepburn agreed. “But the spirit of the woman is what matches your spirit.”

Almost five decades after that 1960 conversation, MacLaine is finally playing Chanel, starring in a three-hour Lifetime original movie Saturday opposite Malcolm McDowell as her friend Marc Bouchier and Slovakian actress Barbora Bobulova as the young Chanel.

“I found Coco to be everything between generous and rude,” MacLaine said in introducing the movie to TV critics in July. “So I don’t know what Audrey really meant.” After a laugh, she continued, “But she was right.”

MacLaine relished Chanel’s contradictions. “I loved her conflict between love and ambition.

“Her sense that everything was about her talent.”

Mentioning Chanel’s “colorful rudeness,” MacLaine said, “Well, I think we’re both colorful. I think we’re both rude. We both can’t hold in what we feel to be the honest opinion.”

She proved that in dominating a panel including her director and executive producer. MacLaine teased and harassed questioners, calling one “this little person here” and suggesting she’d have a drink later with another.

MacLaine has written 12 books about spiritualism and new-age philosophy and said the greatest misconception about her is that she’s wacky.

“That’s not true,” she said; it’s just that a segment of the public “doesn’t resonate to the pragmatism of spiritual understanding.”

At 73, MacLaine acts whenever a project appeals to her, as “Coco Chanel” did. MacLaine’s scenes frame flashbacks showing how Chanel got her start.

The movie inspired MacLaine to design a jewelry collection, something she had always wanted to do.

“I made all these,” she said, waving her fingers. “Do you like them? Aren’t these interesting? It’s called Sky Jewelry. They go on the tops of the fingers, and these are all reflections of the chakras and our inner power.”

Someday, MacLaine would like to play artist Georgia O’Keeffe.

“She also was a contradiction. She stood as a feminist and a person who was independent of men, but it wasn’t really true.”

She’s not ready, though. “I’m not old enough. Next year.”

“Coco Chanel”

When: 8 tonight

Where: Lifetime