'BEACH' BOY; LEONARDO DICAPRIO GETS RIGHT BACK INTO THE WATER.

Byline: David Kronke Staff Writer

KAPALUA, Hawaii - If Leonardo DiCaprio can't go anywhere in the world without being recognized, that's because there isn't anywhere in the world his mug hasn't been seen. And not just seen but adored, splashed across giant-size posters, newspapers and magazine covers, the subject of countless television profiles.

Danny Boyle, director of the Friday-opening ``The Beach,'' the first film DiCaprio has made since the ``Titanic'' refused to go down, says, ``You'd meet these really old Thai ladies who lived in the middle of nowhere and spoke no English but they knew the words 'Jack Dawson.' You realize that the way that film went around the world was absolutely frightening.''

``The Beach,'' very casually adapted from the Alex Garland best seller, stars DiCaprio as Richard, a bored thrill-seeker in Thailand who comes upon a mysterious map promising an Edenic paradise. Recruiting the requisite eye candy (Virginie Ledoyen) and disposable boyfriend (Guillaume Canet) to accompany him on the trek, Richard lands at a compound run with a velvet sledgehammer by the eccentrically enigmatic Sal (Tilda Swinton). Its inhabitants, it seems, have only dipped their toes into the concept of going native: Many of them would still rather peer into the small screen of a GameBoy than drink in the gorgeous island scenery. Traditional Western narrative codices dictate that things subsequently go wrong.

(Virginie Ledoyen, on how she'd respond if handed such a map: ``I would think it's just bulls--t.'')

So, can the world handle another round of Leo-mania? Relax. The guy at Ground Zero of all the hoopla says it ain't gonna happen.

The hype, DiCaprio says, ``really has (waned), actually. Not in the sense that I'm probably just as recognizable as I always was, but the sort of fever that came after 'Titanic' - which I had no control over or no input into and literally no involvement with. It wasn't me, you know what I mean? That has died down. I knew that after 'Titanic' faded down, that that would fade down, too.''

He harbors a blank equanimity toward his getting-screamed-at- wherever-he-goes-by-teen-age-girls lot in life.

``There're days that you sometimes enjoy being a recognizable person, but most of the time you'd rather have your anonymity and private life. But there're pros and cons to anything.'' He offers the usual observations of fame - unwanted responsibilities but great opportunities, etc. - and mentions all the usual suspects - family, friends - that help keep him, as they say, grounded.

The 25-year-old actor has come to talk in standard-issue Young Hollywood attire: Black T-shirt, baggy jeans that'd be more secure around his rib cage or his hips than his waist, sneakers camouflaged as brown bowling shoes, a wisp of a goatee and insouciantly moussed hair that can't just look that roguishly tousled by happy accident; it must be fussed over.

DiCaprio is right in one respect: ``Titanic'' was both a blessing and a curse for him. Before, he was an interesting young actor with one Oscar nomination already under his belt (for ``What's Eating Gilbert Grape'') and some intriguing little movies (``The Basketball Diaries,'' ``Marvin's Room,'' ``Total Eclipse'') that no one bothered to see but which had earned him some serious indie credibility. ``Titanic,'' following on the heels of the hyper-hysterical poseur's updating of ``Romeo and Juliet,'' turned him into a heartthrob, pure and simple.

Certainly, DiCaprio didn't seem awfully grateful to ``Titanic'' director James Cameron. Rumors of a rift reached their apex when DiCaprio blew off the Oscars the night Cameron christened himself ``King of the World.''

``There's been a lot of misconceptions about (our relationship),'' DiCaprio says. ``It takes that type of personality to be able to command that type of film. You need that presence amongst thousands of people doing hundreds of different jobs simultaneously to bring that movie together.'' Well put and highly diplomatic, but DiCaprio throws it all away with the next question: Compare and contrast Cameron with his latest director, Boyle. ``He and Danny are polar opposites. Danny is an inherently sweet, genuine person who's really sensitive,'' DiCaprio says. ``They're really different.''

After ``Titanic'' induced enough teen-age tears to make Kleenex stock soar higher than an Internet startup, DiCaprio spent a couple of years globe-trotting and getting copiously mentioned in gossip columns - those who complain that ``youth is wasted on the young'' should meet this guy - before hitting ``The Beach.''

``Beach'' producer Andrew MacDonald conceded that in the large wake of ``Titanic,'' a ``credibility factor'' question dangles over DiCaprio's head. And many of the liberties taken with Garland's book - transforming him from an irresolute, abstinent Brit to a hot-dogging American who beds two women - seemed cynical ploys to cash in on the superstar's pinup status. It also meant DiCaprio hip-checked Ewan MacGregor, a longtime Boyle-MacDonald collaborator (``Trainspotting,'' ``A Life Less Ordinary''), out of a role the latter hungered for. ``People in London didn't like the fact that he was going to be in it - my wife, actually,'' MacDonald admits. ``Ewan was ... upset that he didn't get to do it.''

MacDonald does allow that DiCaprio is hardly appeasing his ``Titanic'' fans. ``Leo wants to do it for a different audience; the studio would've preferred `T2,' '' he says. ``If we had made it for $10 million, we would have made it darker.''

Boyle, on the other hand, embraced the changes DiCaprio brought to the project. ``In the book, he's so British, he just keeps looking at this French girl and thinking how beautiful she is, and he never tells her,'' Boyle says, exasperated at the very thought. ``He sits there wistfully - he's very repressed - and never says what he's feeling. And the first thing we decided was, 'Well, we've got to get rid of that. He's got to get on with the French girl - it's a movie, for Christ's sake, it's all about contact.' And if it's a good decision, other things roll on from that. It became part of Richard's character - he's very passive in the book, and he's much more a conqueror in the film.''

For DiCaprio, ``The Beach'' represented a good compromise between art film and blockbuster. ``It's not true that I just want to make smaller films - I want to try everything,'' he says. ``Before 'Titanic,' I did do smaller films, because that was really what was available to me. And 'Titanic' was actually a break from the norm for me. It was something that I tried that was different. This is getting back to what I did before that. I'm young. I'm still experimenting. Whatever genre of film it is, I don't want to get stuck into one sort of a mold. I want to diversify myself as an actor and try as many different characters and styles of filmmaking as I can.

``If I wasn't in the position I'm in, it certainly wouldn't be the same (film), but just because there's more money involved doesn't mean you can't make an experimental, subversive film.''

And ``The Beach'' is subversive, DiCaprio believes. ``I love what it said,'' he says. ``Without speaking for a generation, it just talks about how we've been so desensitized in a lot of ways. We're so influenced by the media, and everything nowadays is even more and more prepackaged and predigested and prethought-out for us. This character goes in search of something tangible and real, emotional - a real experience that he can connect with. And he goes traveling in Thailand and ends up finding this piratelike utopia, which seems to be the answer to all his problems. And in the end, he eventually realizes that paradise is essentially a false concept.''

Unsurprisingly, the studio wasn't as interested in being so subversive. ``They would've liked for him to stay with the girl to be more romantic,'' Boyle remembers, ``but we were absolutely adamant - the whole point is that the thing seems to be the perfect ingredients, and it twists and turns in the second half.'' Boyle adds that the studio would have preferred for Richard not to have been the impetus for what is basically the whole third act of the film. Asked how they presumed to change things, he merely smiles and shrugs.

``But even more than that, and this is what we found really interesting, they didn't like that he lies to the girl,'' Boyle adds. ``He lies a few times in the film, and he lies not for the greater good, just to save his own skin. And they found that really, really difficult. And I said, 'Look, people lie! The president lies!' and they said to us, 'Yeah, but this is a movie.' I think the difference between viewing a film in Britain and viewing it in America is that when they identify with a lead, they invest in that character their trust. It's really weird.''

While filming in Thailand, DiCaprio experienced one of those negatives associated with fame: Environmental groups attacked him personally in an effort to call attention to the ecological problems in that country. Their thinking may have been cloudy - Leo's shooting in nature, therefore Leo's directly responsible for ruining the environment - or they may have been crazy like foxes.

As Boyle puts it, ``Their protest was an attempt through his fame to raise the profile of the environment in Thailand, which I think is actually a very good thing.''

DiCaprio may see things differently. ``It's something that I have no control over,'' he says. ``I have no control over what people say about me, or what they attach me to. For example, with the environmental thing, I was used as a sort of figurehead for what was going on with the studios' relationship with the forestry department in renting the island. Unfortunately, we got caught in the middle and were used as a test case for the propaganda that was going on there with the government and the forestry department and the environmentalists, and meanwhile we had done absolutely nothing wrong.''

DiCaprio is returning to work more quickly this time - after all, inducing whispers for activities like hitting the bar with buddy Tobey Maguire while lounging here in Maui has to grow tiresome after a while. His next project is Martin Scorsese's ``Gangs of New York.'' And he's being talked up as a teen-age Anakin Skywalker in George Lucas' next ``Star Wars'' flick.

``I'll see when I read the script,'' is all DiCaprio will say. ``I thought the first one was interesting. There was more that could be done, though.''

If the script matched the quality of the last film, would he be interested?

``I don't know,'' he says as diplomatically as possible. ``I can't make that assumption.'' But his eyes roll around in their sockets, flashing playfully an unspoken message: ``Don't get me into trouble!''

Producer MacDonald notes that MacGregor, who lost the ``Beach'' role to DiCaprio, would also be in the next ``Star Wars'' film. He enthuses, ``I'd like to see that light-sabre fight!''

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo: (1) Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen), Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Etienne (Guillaume Canet) gauge the distance they'll have to swim to reach a secret island paradise in ``The Beach.''

(2) Canet, left, and Ledoyen watch DiCaprio burn the map to the secret island, which they'll eventually visit in the film.

(3) Once he reaches the island, paradise doesn't last long for DiCaprio.

(4) Leonardo DiCaprio

(5 -- color -- cover) Trapped in paradise with Leonardo