DUNAWAY MONKEYS AROUND WITH COMEDY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Faye Dunaway has been with Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando.

And she was with them in some of the best movies ever made. Now she's sharing a bill with an orangutan. But in Dunaway's estimation, making "Dunston Checks In" was another challenging new step on a remarkable career path.

"It's a family movie for sure, but I think there are very strong adult performances in it, too," Dunaway said of "Dunston," in which the title ape causes havoc in a posh New York hotel. "The impulse was to get into comedy. I've always wanted to do comedy; not exclusively, but to have it as a part of what I do."

Although reviewers have drawn obvious parallels between Dunaway's pretentious, imperious hotel owner Mrs. Dubrow and Leona Helmsley, the actress claimed the actual model for her performance was her friend Ivana Trump. That may explain why, although she's the target of much comic mischief, Dunaway does her best to avoid caricaturing Dubrow, refraining from the mugging and shouting that nine out of 10 actors would automatically go for.

Dunaway found the challenges of comedy enjoyable and energizing. "There's a different way of playing what you would do with it in a dramatic interpretation - that would probably have been like 'Network,' cooler and more withdrawn - but comedy is very intense and very driven, almost," she said. "For a character like this, you're very unable to see anything but your own point of view. That was a lot of fun. And the slapstick was great. I think slapstick is an essential part of comedy."

So essential, in fact, that Dunaway claims to have delighted in such undignified activities as wallowing in gooey pink cake cream and road-testing various preparations that the orangutan actor, Sam, would find appetizing enough to lick off her cheek. "Blueberry yogurt finally did the trick," she said.

It wasn't yogurt but quarts of dyed syrup - movie blood - that first made Faye Dunaway an indelible movie icon. In 1967, the blond, green-eyed ingenue from backwater Bascom, Fla., co-starred with Warren Beatty in only her third feature, "Bonnie and Clyde." The movie became a sensation and is credited with ushering in a new era of graphic violence and sexual frankness in the American cinema.

It was classic after classic for the next decade. The revisionist western satire "Little Big Man" with Dustin Hoffman."Chinatown," which many consider the best-written film of all time, with Jack Nicholson. The taut conspiracy thriller "Three Days of the Condor" with Robert Redford.

This remarkable run was capped off with the 1976 Best Actress Oscar for "Network's" Diana Christensen, the ruthless television executive who, long before Nicole Kidman in "To Die For," acted out the killer philosophy that it doesn't mean anything if it's not on television.

Many of these characters - Christensen, murderous Bonnie Parker, Evelyn Mulwray, the "Chinatown" femme fatale who turns out to be the tortured victim rather than the cliched tormentor of men - presented startling (some said negative) new female images as far as legitimate Hollywood movies were concerned.

"That I didn't take the typical roles that were there for actresses, where the women are more traditional, feminine and demure, was one part me and one part the star machine," Dunaway writes in her recently published, well-reviewed autobiography "Looking for Gatsby: My Life." "Those groundbreaking roles came to me with a great deal of regularity. I was awfully good at acting them, but they weren't necessarily me."

Maybe not. But Dunaway seems to have invested a big part of herself in her key roles. She vociferously defends her characters as if they were beloved children (the twice-divorced Dunaway, 55, has a teen-age son, Liam).

Take Christensen, who some interpreted as a monstrous vision of a driven career woman.

"She was a TV baby, someone who had been raised on television and that was all she knew," Dunaway insisted. "She had no sense of what real relationships are, and in that sense she was quite tragic. I mean, there was so much to that character, historically and in terms of what (writer Paddy Chayefsky) was trying to do with her. I hate when people just dismiss human beings by saying they're bitches or something."

Real human being Dunaway has, off and on, had to defend herself from

accusations of being difficult to work with. With self-aware candor, she readily admits not getting along with "Chinatown" director Roman Polanski (in her book, she blames the friction on weaknesses in both their personalities).

Still, ever since her near-channeling of Joan Crawford for the accomplished (if campy) bioflick "Mommie Dearest" (1981), Dunaway seems to have been haunted by the earlier star's diva reputation. The most recent, and most highly publicized, controversy resulted from her summary dismissal from "Sunset Boulevard" shortly before she was to take the lead in the L.A. production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's mega-musical. A January 1995 legal settlement of the dispute between Dunaway and Webber prevents her from commenting on the subject.

"I'd like to say something about it, but I can't," she teasingly admitted. But Dunaway minces few words when discussing the overall reputation issue.

"My effort is always to create something memorable, something really special," she said unapologetically. "That is not something that is always adored. If you want to be easy, you just say, 'Oh, yeah, anything you want to do. Great.' And I don't. I really have very specific ideas, I pursue excellence and I like to work very, very hard."

Those standards have repeatedly revived a career that took cyclical dips in the late '70s and mid-'80s. She won widespread acclaim for the dedicated drunk - again, years before current Oscar darling Nicolas Cage did it - in the 1987 "Barfly." She continues to do interesting work with world-class filmmakers (Volker Schlondorff's "The Handmaid's Tale," Emir Kusturica's "Arizona Dream") and legendary actors (Marlon Brando in "Don Juan De Marco").

And despite an abortive recent foray into sitcomland with "It Had to be You," Dunaway has generally had pretty good luck with television projects, such as the TV movies "Evita Peron" and "Cold Sassy Tree," the latter of which she also produced.

Coming up is a role in the directing debut of that other Oscar darling, actor Kevin Spacey, who's at the helm of the hostage drama "Albino Alligator." She's also planning to play Russian empress Catherine the Great for Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione. A return to New York theater, the site of Dunaway's earliest success, is scheduled for next summer.

Though she acknowledged that actresses have to look harder than ever to find decent work these days, Dunaway would rather gaze positively toward the future than, post-biography, continue dwelling on an often glorious past.

"It was difficult to write that book (with journalist Betsy Sharkey)," Dunaway admitted. "It was difficult to look at my life because you can't change anything, you can only learn from what happened.

"I'd much rather look at the present and the future. To look at the past is hard because you have to look at your own behavior. On the other hand, it helps because you really get a sense of who you are and where you are. So it's a painful and yet very, in the end, profitable experience."

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO

Photo (1) Actress Faye Dunaway's career has taken a turn toward comedy in "Dunston Checks In," which stars a trained orangutan named Sam. (2) "She was a TV baby, and that was all she knew," Dunaway says of her "Network" character, programming executive Diane Christenson. Shown in the 1976 film with Peter Finch as TV newscaster Howard Beale, the role earned Dunaway an Academy Award for Best Actress.