another REGEX question

I have a string can look like either of the following: <p>some stuff</p> <p align = "left">some stuff</p> I want to use eregi_replace to take out the first p tag whether it be <p> or <p align......> with a space I assumed that $str = eregi_replace ("<p.*>", " ",$str); but it matches the entire string and thus turns the whole string into one space. aparently regex will match the biggest possible match rather than the smallest my question is how do i get it to match the smallest. thanx in advance.. Julian