Acting on faith.

Many Catholic actors say their love of the stage started early--glimpsed in the artistry and transformingpower of Sunday liturgy. But their faith plays a more complex role today, sustaining them when the very possibility of "making it"as an actor is itself a leap of faith.

ONE EASTER SUNDAY, LONG before I ever saw a play or movie, my parents exposed me to drama at its most sublime: They took me to church.

Surrounded by lilies and stained-glass windows, with a choir chanting while the congregation fell to its knees, I had no idea what was going on but knew it was tremendously important.

I've loved theater ever since and am not surprised at the many Catholics who devote their lives to it.

"The many years I spent as an altar boy were excellent preparation for the stage," says Thomas A. Cahill, currently portraying a priest in off-off Broadway's Joey and Mary's Wedding. "You wear a costume. You work before an audience. You have to memorize dialogue. You carry props. You're even following a kind of script.

"Sometimes things go wrong and you have to improvise. There's also the same rush of adrenaline as you walk to the altar that you get going onstage. Even the same panicky feeling that you may not be able to remember your lines?

But behind all the glamour and magic, the theater isn't an easy life for anyone, Catholic or otherwise.

"Most people go out looking for a job nine or 10 times in their whole lives. Actors have to do it every day," says Debbie Pingitore, who takes photos of other actors to make ends meet while she struggles to balance her theater career and spiritual life. "Very few of us have the things other people take for granted. We may never get married, or start a family, or buy a house and car."

The median income for an Actor's Equity member was $6,276 last year--more than $2,000 below the federal poverty line. And it's worse for the tens of thousands of non-union members who appear in off-off Broadway theaters, garages, friends' apartments, or anyplace that will have them--all too often without pay. Nor the countless beginners who never find a bona fide acting job of any kind.

EVEN THE FEW WHO SUCCEED RARELY have an easy time of it. The late Chris Farley, after being discovered at Chicago's Second City Theater in the late '80s, catapulted to fame overnight on Saturday Night Live. Soon he was appearing on many of the top television comedy and late-night talk shows and getting ever-larger roles in movies.

Farley was an ardent Catholic and active with a community services program called Friendly Visitors, at Saint Malachy's famed Actors Chapel in New York City. Sister Teresa O'Connell, a Sparkhill Dominican who works with the program, knew nothing about Farley's career. But, impressed with the enthusiasm he showed working with the poor, O'Connell became a close friend.

"Chris was terrific with people," she remembers. "Everyone liked him. He was also an extremely serious Catholic. I'd see him in the church alone, doing the Stations of the Cross. But working in the theater is a hard, hard life, and I could tell the poor boy was troubled."

Farley did a great deal of good for Saint Malachy's financially as well, making large donations to Friendly Visitors. But despite his faith, his troubles were overwhelming, and he died at 33 of a drug overdose.

Many actors look to their faith to help them handle the rough times. Joe Barbara was doing the kind of job most apprentice actors do, bartending in a karaoke bar, when he learned that two London producers were looking for an American actor to star in Buddy, a musical about rock legend Buddy Holly.

"After two auditions in New York, the talent agents flew me to London for a final audition. I rehearsed all weekend to make sure I'd be faultless," he says. "Sunday morning I thought, `I can't take time out for Mass, I've got to practice.' But I went, and in the church I decided I'd done my job. The rest was in God's hands."

When Barbara found out he didn't get the part, he was still satisfied that he'd done his best. Not long after, he was offered the role of Joe Carlino on Another World. He hopes it will be a stepping stone to writing and directing films. But Barbara is careful not to let the disappointments of his career get in the way of his spiritual life.

Young Catholic actors do often struggle, however, to find a new relationship with a faith they may feel has let them down in some way.

"I went to a Catholic all-boys school, where I was considered different, hypersensitive," says actor Chris McGowan. "I wasn't into sports or rough-and-tough. So the guys in that high school treated me very badly, and I lost all sense of spirituality. But I found it again in the community theater I started to work in at that time."

McGowan is now moving back toward . the church, one small step at a time. "I'd like to get to the point where I could find this faith everybody talks about. It's out there, and I know in my heart God will lead me in the right direction."

Susan Kaslow O'Dell's faith had started slipping away in her early acting years, and she wasn't doing much to stop it. But she did notice that she tended to stop in the nearest church when she felt vulnerable, a habit left over from childhood. Then she found herself remaining for services and becoming fascinated by the way the ideas of Vatican II were taking effect.

"The church had become so much more theatrical. The priest was facing the congregation and laypeople were doing the readings. It made me realize, apart from everything else, what great theater the Mass is."

Kaslow O'Dell joined the choir at her parish church (eventually making two CDs with them) and now works as a cantor at Saint Patrick's Cathedral once a week.

"Heightened awareness is part of an actor's training, and we can bring that to the liturgy," she says. "We know how to bring out the full meaning of the words in the liturgy, without going over the top. We can also coach other laypeople."

Other actors who might be bitter about institutional Catholicism have allowed their faith in God to help them transcend their frustrations. Born in the Dominican Republic, Rosetta LeNoire came to this country as a young gift at a time when black Catholics were required to sit in the back of the church. But she holds no resentments: "Plenty of white people have been treated pretty badly throughout history, too."

LeNoire has spent 54 of her 88 years working (almost continually) in the theater. She gives her faith all the credit for keeping her going through all the ups and downs.

"When things get tough, I just tell myself, `Say your rosary, Rosie! Talk to Saint Francis or Saint John.'" She has appeared in hundreds of productions on- and off-Broadway, and also has played in several soap operas, including The Guiding Light. (She still pops up on re-runs of Family Matters.)

"Actors are so sensitive, so they can feel what's good or bad in the church, like canaries sent down to test if mines are safe. These actors have found much consolation since Vatican II but also much disappointment," says Father Gary Seibert, S.J. Besides being assistant pastor of Times Square's famed Holy Cross Church, he directs plays in the church basement.

Seibert doesn't feel the answer is a return to the kind of church symbolized by the priest played by Catholic actor Bing Crosby.

"In those days there was a great yearning for an answer that the Catholic Church seemed to provide. But that `Hollywoodization' of priests sentimentalized them, trivialized all the powerful social action they'd brought about in this country. Which is not to say Going My Way isn't one of my favorite movies."

Paulist Father Eric Andrews, reflecting on his congregation at Saint Paul the Apostle Church, just down the street from New York's Lincoln Center, says: "Actors make better parishioners. They tend to wear their feelings on their sleeves, so you can share with them more easily. Many are very plugged-in spiritually, and they're expressing God's creative energy. They provide a real service, a real ministry for the church."

Before his ordination, Andrews was a member of the Muppets production team. (He often peppers his homilies with quotes from Kermit the Frog.) "Insecurity, in my experience, goes hand-in-hand with a lot of talent. Actors face so many disappointments. It's hard for someone like me, who needs the security of a steady job, to know how they can stand it."

Besides teaching at Fordham University, presiding at liturgy, and engaging in spiritual direction, Father George Drance, S.J. is a working actor, with the American Shakespeare Festival and New York's famed La Mama theater among his credits. Drance acknowledges a "creative tension" between his two vocations. "Priesthood calls me to a kind of acting that is for others. And acting grounds my priesthood in the struggles of the human person and the human spirit." Drance believes good theater can benefit one's prayer life by exercising the imagination. "But it must be human beings in the same room with other human beings at the moment of inspiration," he says. "Television is a deceptive manipulation of the imagination. The viewer is passive, but the medium can be invasive."

Some Catholic actors manage to raise families in spite of the difficulties of the profession. Ever since Susan Mansor married fellow acting student Michael Bahr, they've been happily balancing the demands of family life and busy theatrical careers. They were taken aback, though, when their first child, Duncan Bahr, was bitten by the acting bug at age 17.

Though he doesn't like to talk about it, the younger Bahr regards his acting as a "divine mission": His most interesting role so far was when he toured three states in The Jewelry Shop, a drama written 50 years ago by a young Catholic actor from Poland. This actor/playwright, Karol Wojtyla, went on to become a priest but never lost his affection for the theater--even after he was elected Pope John Paul II.

The experience of being Catholic has itself often made good theater, most recently in a slew of films and off-Broadway shows about nuns. Seven years ago Maripat Donovan and a friend wrote Late-Nite Catechism, a one-woman show Donovan has been starring in ever since.

The play is largely improvisational, with "Sister" explaining the fine points of theology ("It's a venial sin to lie to your grandmother; it's a mortal sin to kill her"), confiscating gum, and firing questions at the audience ("Tell Sister how the Ascension differs from the Assumption"). Correct answers are rewarded with an Immaculate Conception refrigerator magnet or a glow-in-the-dark rosary.

Do Catholics find Donovan (who first began acting in a Catholic high school) irreverent? "My best audience so far was at the retirement home of the Sisters of Saint Agnes, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

"I had 250 nuns jumping up and down and squealing with delight!"

ROBERT REILLY is a writer who lives in New York City.