Felicity Huffman looked fiercely fit in a tight white Randolph Duke dress at the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards gala at the Palm Springs Convention Center on Saturday night.

All eyes were definitely on the blonde actress, in part because of the dress and in part because she was one of the few Oscar-hopeful honorees — other than Terrence Howard and last minute-arrival Shirley MacLaine — who walked the PSIFF awards red carpet and spoke to waiting press crews.

Huffman freely admitted that all the attention she’s been getting for her disparate roles — a working wife and mother on ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and a man having a sex change operation in The Weinstein Co.’s “Transamerica” — is a bit overwhelming.

“I just keep waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out and yell “Punk'd!,” she confessed.

Accepting her breakthrough performance award onstage, Huffman acknowledged, “This film would not have been seen by anyone without Harvey Weinstein and Harvey wouldn’t have seen it if my husband (William H. Macy) hadn’t called him and convinced him to come to a screening.”

She also thanked “Transamerica” writer-director Duncan Tucker for his “love of humanity, his desire to unify and heal and his unfailing allegiance to the truth.”

She summed up the controversial film — about a transgender man about to have a sex change operation who finds out he’s fathered a son — for the predominately conservative Republican community: “I think this film proves: That which unifies us outweighs that which divides us. It’s a big world and there’s room for everyone.”

Huffman’s gonna be a busy gal this week. Next stop, tonight’s Critics Choice Awards at the Santa Monica Civic Center where she’s up for the best actress award (“Transamerica”). Then she flies to New York to pick up the best actress award (for “Transamerica”) from the National Board of Review at Tavern on the Green.

Next Monday, Huffman will be at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards where she’s up for three: one for “Housewives,” the other for “Transamerica” and don't forget best ensemble cast for “Housewives.” Finally, she’s set to attend the Screen Actors Guild Awards later this month, where she’s again up for both roles and for best ensemble cast.

Wow. This has gotta be the most elaborate “Punk'd!” Kutcher has ever pulled off.

Photo: Felicity Huffman in a Randolph Duke gown at the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards gala.
(Eric Neitzel / WireImage)