In Hollywood drunk driving arrest, Paris Hilton would have preferred to duck the publicity

For once, Paris Hilton wasn’t happy to be the center of attention. Hours after paparazzi swarmed the Hollywood police station where the celebutante was booked for investigation of drunk driving, she told radio host Ryan Seacrest people were making too big a deal out of her arrest.

“Everything I do is blown out of proportion and it really hurts my feelings,” said Hilton, who called the incident “nothing.”

Los Angeles police officers stopped the 25-year-old socialite early Thursday morning after she was seen driving erratically, said Officer Marjan Mobasser.

The singer, actress, handbag designer and heiress to the Hilton hotel fortune told KIIS-FM’s Seacrest she was on an early morning hamburger run when she was stopped.

She hadn’t eaten all day and was “starving,” Hilton explained. So the one-time pitchwoman for Carl’s Jr. said she decided to visit a neighborhood In-N-Out burger stand.

“So maybe I was speeding a little bit and I got pulled over,” she said, denying that she was driving recklessly.

“I was just really hungry and I wanted to have an In-N-Out burger,” she said.

Police said she had a blood-alcohol level of .08 percent, the minimum to warrant an arrest.

Hilton had spent Wednesday filming a music video and going out for dinner with her sister Nicky and some friends. Later they headed to a charity event, where Hilton said she had one margarita.

According to a national research study, a 137-pound woman would need to consume three drinks in one hour on an empty stomach to reach a .08 blood-alcohol level. The 5-foot-8-inch fashionably lithe Hilton likely weighs much less than that.

Police turned over the misdemeanor case to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, which will decide whether to file charges. If Hilton is charged she likely will be arraigned on Sept. 28, said city attorney spokesman Nick Velasquez.

If convicted, Hilton could be sentenced to six months in jail and fined $1,000. As a first-time offender, however, she is more likely to receive a fine, probation and license suspension and be ordered to perform community service and attend an alcohol-rehabilitation program.

Thursday’s arrest represented just the latest confrontation with the legal system for the celebrity heiress.

In February, a Superior Court judge ordered Hilton to stay away from event producer Brian Quintana after he claimed she shoved him on at least three occasions and badmouthed him.

A month earlier, actress and diamond heiress Zeta Graff filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against Hilton claiming the heiress spewed “vicious lies” to the New York Post about an altercation the two had in a London nightclub.

In November, Hilton was a passenger in a silver Bentley that a companion drove into the back of a large commercial truck, scratching the hood of the car. That mishap was captured on videotape, as was a June incident when Hilton’s Range Rover was backed into a car in a parking garage.

But the most famous Hilton videotape remains the one that surfaced in 2003, of her and an ex-boyfriend having sex. Until then she had just been just another pretty face on the party circuit.

The sex tape made her an overnight cyberspace celebrity and instant favorite of the tabloids. Her reality TV series “The Simple Life” debuted soon after.

In 2004, Hilton released her book, “Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose.”

She has also appeared in episodes of television’s “The O.C.” and “Veronica Mars” and had a role in the 2005 horror flick “House of Wax.”

Hilton released a perfume bearing her name in 2004. Earlier this year, she unveiled her cell-phone video game, “Diamondquest.” She’ll follow that with a line of Paris Hilton purses and cosmetics.

Hilton’s string of boyfriends has also kept her in the news. She was engaged for several months to Greek shipping heir Paris Latsis before dating another Greek shipping heir, Stavros Niarchos III. She has also been linked to former University of Southern California football star Matt Leinert, who recently signed with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals.

Recently, Hilton announced she had taken a vow of sexual abstinence.