AMERICAN BEAUTY WHEN IT COMES TO ACTING, THE CHAMELEONIC THORA BIRCH GETS IN OVER HER HEAD - IN A GOOD WAY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

``I am all about diversity. Maybe it doesn't look like that from my credits so far but, seriously, I am obsessed with diversity and I want to show that.''

Thora Birch is showing it just fine at the moment. Poured into a clingy, flower-print dress, her chestnut hair pulled back save for a tendril curling playfully down her right cheek, the 19-year-old veteran actress projects old-time movie-star glamour like nobody's business.

What's that got to do with diversity? You might not pose that question after seeing ``Ghost World,'' the acclaimed new movie in which Birch physically disappears into a clomping, bespectacled, helmet-haired fashion atrocity named Enid.

It isn't so much Enid's look - which Birch not only put on 20 pounds for but somehow, miraculously, managed to make work - that the actress is trying to contrast. Rather, it's the perception that she's the most alienated teen-ager in Hollywood.

The problem stems from superficial similarities between ``Ghost World'' and her work in the Oscar-winning ``American Beauty.'' Birch's portrayal of Kevin Spacey's resentful-to-just-this-side-of-murderous daughter Jane Burnham was so deftly indelible that it wiped out most people's memories of the cute, plucky juveniles she'd played in the likes of ``Monkey Trouble,'' ``Hocus Pocus'' and the Harrison Ford-Tom Clancy thriller cycle.

And since her interim work in the lavish fantasy ``Dungeons & Dragons'' was little seen, most fans will be following Thora straight from Jane to Enid. Not that they'll be disappointed. The ``Ghost World'' character is an even more thoroughly and persuasively imagined young outsider, and she's much more the center of the new film's lost-in-America freak show. True Thoraphiles won't have much trouble distinguishing Jane from Enid, either, and not just because of the latter's wacky outfits. Birch has made them such vibrantly individualized creations that describing them both as alienated means about as much as saying they both breathe oxygen.

And just in case we haven't made it clear enough yet, about all Enid shares with Thora is an enthusiasm for things other people might never think of exposing themselves to.

``It's not so much that I can relate to it because I live a very different life,'' says the L.A. native, who was introduced to the acting game by a family friend at the tender age of 4. ``But I can understand it, recognize it as being very realistic and empathize with it. And I have friends that have large strokes of Enid in them, although I've never actually met a genuine, head-to-toe, psychologically up-and-down, exact clone of Enid. She is very, very rare.''

And she comes from a rare place, too: Daniel Clowes' graphic novel, or underground comic book, as they used to be called, that focuses on contemporary culture and psychology rather than superheroic adventure fantasy. The film's script was co-written by Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff, who makes his transition to feature filmmaking with ``Ghost World'' following his widely admired documentary on another underground artist, ``Crumb.''

Using both the episodic graphic novel and the slightly more plot-structured screenplay as a guide, Birch carefully developed a personality for Enid that transcended both. It also defied most conventions established by previous movies about rebellious, smart-aleck geeks.

Even the sympathetic ones.

``Hopefully, each scene, each encounter Enid has in the film gave me opportunities to add aspects to her, make her more layered and more complex - and, because of that, more human,'' Birch explains. ``Therefore, the audience wouldn't just look at her as being a totally anti-social, walking disclaimer for self-loathing and iconoclasm.

``I wanted to bring out a bit more of a vivaciousness and, at times, of extreme delight in the world around her; moments of complete entertainment by the absurdity of it all, you know? That was the element of her that really drew me, and I found myself pushing for it more because it's so easy to get stuck in the sardonic thing. It's fun to do that, but at some point, you have to join the world. It's sad, because Enid is forced to meet the adult she absolutely has to become. The teenage years are over; she can't stay in that zone that, I think, she had become a little too comfortable in. So it's good that she goes ... wherever.''

Inside Enid

Although the director was initially uncertain Birch could figure out just where to go with Enid, working with the young actress quickly brought him around.

``She's a really, really talented actress,'' says Zwigoff, an aging San Francisco counter-culturalist not given to empty, Hollywood-style logrolling. ``I mean, she really takes it seriously. She's very disciplined.''

She'd have to be to maintain that look ... then so totally discard it.

``It was my hair, except when it was green,'' Birch confesses. ``But I ain't doing it again, I'll tell you that. Next time, I'm wearing a wig.''

As bad as the brunet chop was, though, you'd assume the added poundage would have been even more traumatic for a teen-ager, especially one in a field that always exposes her to media scrutiny. Once again, though, Birch surprises.

``Oh, that was a lot of fun,'' she says with dripping, Enid irony, then bursts into a girlish chuckle. ``Well, actually, it was fun gaining it. Easy, you know? But then you've got to take it off.

``But I didn't even think about it while I was doing it because I was already too immersed in Enid at that point. She had already taken me over to some degree, like Thora disappeared and I only saw the world through Enid's eyes. But then I had to face it when I was done playing her, and it was like, 'Snap to it! You're an actress living in L.A.' It was a little difficult to lose the weight, but it always is. No complaints.''

Birch reports that being possessed by her movie characters has become the real occupational hazard over the past three years. That might explain a certain perceived glumness when she was in the throes of playing Jane or, on her more depressed days, Enid.

``My parents hate it,'' admits Birch, whose folks named her for the Norse thunder god Thor. She divides her time between the family's spread 100 miles outside L.A. and an office-cum-apartment in town. ``I'm telling you, I'm constantly apologizing to them, going, 'I didn't mean to say whatever it was I just said to you.'

``But characters also teach you stuff and help you grow,'' Birch adds. ``But only in hindsight, after I play them and, then, think about them back in Thora mode. That's when Thora learns a few things.''

One thing Birch learned from the ``Ghost World'' experience was to appreciate a much wider range of music. Both Zwigoff and Steve Buscemi's Seymour, a character in the film who becomes a kindred soul mate to Enid, are into early blues and jazz records, and Birch quickly picked up on the new/old sounds.

``I used to only like one kind of music - alternative rock,'' she explains. ``But in the past year, I've hardly listened to any new music - besides Radiohead - and have really been exploring all kinds of new music. So I love all kinds now; it's like I've developed genuine eclectic taste! No one realizes that they might have eclectic tastes unless they try something new.''

As mentioned earlier: Nothing like diversity. When it comes to future work, though, Birch's wish list sounds more conventional than otherwise.

Looking for love (on screen)

``Ideally, I'd like to come across a great, light romantic comedy or an epic love story,'' she says. ``Something that I really haven't done yet. In principle, I agree with the point of view expressed in 'Ghost World,' but I realize that that's probably not the perfect perspective for me to take as an actress. Theoretically, I'm in the same boat with the people who made this movie, but I'm not gonna act on it. I'm too chicken!''

Depends on what you call chicken. Birch will be seen next in a British psychological thriller, ``The Hole,'' for which she runs a behavioral gamut from sweet and innocent to controlling and anguished - and all with an English accent.

One gets the impression Thora Birch will always find ways to make even the most conventional characterizations unique.

``You know what? Anything that's kind of difficult, too hard or a challenge, that's the fun of it,'' Birch says. ``That is why you act, or at least why I do, anyway. Because it is a job, it's work. But at the end of the day, of the process, it is a very fulfilling thing to know that you faced up to a challenge, that you pushed yourself. Even if it doesn't come out the right way - and I rarely feel that it came out the way that I completely meant it to - the process of working hard at doing it is what I love the most.''

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) The many faces of Thora Birch

(2) no caption (Thora Birch)

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer

(3) Thora Birch says that her character in ``Ghost World,'' Enid, finds that she ``can't stay in that zone that, I think, she had become a little too comfortable in.''

(4) Thora Birch, left, played the angst-ridden teen Jane Burnham, with best friend Angela (Mena Suvari), in ``American Beauty.''