HOUSE star Lisa Edelstein has a dark past - she was the New York party regular dubbed the Queen Of The Night by famed gay socialite JAMES ST JAMES. The actress, who now plays straight-laced hospital boss DR LISA CUDDY on the hit medical drama starring Brit Hugh Laurie, was once a wild child face on the Manhattan party scene. She says, "What excited me about the club scene was that the people were as different on the outside as I felt on the inside. "I just needed to be around people who were expressing themselves." Edelstein confirms she was Lisa E in the new issue of America's TV Guide, but she insists she was just a teenager out for a good time and she never got caught up in the seedy drug world St James wrote about in his book PARTY MONSTER. She adds, "I'm not saying there weren't drugs, but the violence that my friend James St James wrote about in Party Monster came later. "I did learn a huge lesson about celebrity, because I had just enough to experience being adored - and then hated."