GOOD TIME GAL `SHOWTIME' STAR RENE RUSSO REFUSES TO TAKE HER JOB - OR HERSELF - VERY SERIOUSLY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

As anyone who has spent a good amount of time in the L.A. area knows, there is no lower form of human life than a television producer.

Burbank native Rene Russo has been around here for most of her life and has met more than a few producers since successfully making the transition from supermodel to movie star a dozen-odd years ago.

But when she was cast in the role of Chase Renzi, the reality-TV producer who brings together mismatched LAPD cops played by Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy for the title series in ``Showtime,'' Russo decided not to go the obvious route.

``Originally, they saw her like the woman in 'Network,' '' the actress explains. ``Faye Dunaway did a killer job with that and was amazing in that movie. But I didn't really want to play Chase in that straight-ahead way. It was right for 'Network,' but I didn't feel that this was that hard- edged. I wanted her to be a little bit more human, in terms of her vulnerability and desperation, put a little more Lucy-esque humor into it.''

Which isn't to say that Russo wasn't tough, both in her role and on the set.

``Chase was fun because she was a complete manipulator and didn't feel guilty about it at all,'' Russo says. ``She could look at you and lie and just be fine with it and have absolutely no guilt. Does she not know that De Niro is going to react the way that he does to some of the things she does to him? Yeah, she knows, but she doesn't care. She's got blinders on.''

Just like in real life

Based, perhaps, on anybody we know? Or, more specifically, on someone Russo has met professionally? Oddly enough, she says no real producers were referenced - consciously anyway - in the making of this film.

``I didn't base her on anyone I've worked with,'' she insists. ``I just built her up from what I'd do if I knew that I just had to get this done or I would have no job, added to the energy that I have normally. I've always wanted to put that into a character: really talk fast, really high-energy, get-it-done kind of a person. I haven't really played a character like that.''

Maybe not. But Russo's positive energy, which quickly becomes evident during any conversation with the actress, has a way of making itself felt on the screen. Whether in a dramatic (``In the Line of Fire,'' ``Outbreak,'' ``Ransom,'' ``The Thomas Crown Affair''), comedic (``Get Shorty,'' ``Tin Cup,'' the ``Major League'' films) or in-between (the last two ``Lethal Weapons'') context, there's an appealing vibrancy to all of Russo's performances.

``Rene works very strongly off of her instincts, and how she is in real life is not too dissimilar from the way she comes off in her screen characters,'' observes ``Showtime'' director Tom Dey. ``She throws herself into the work at hand. Plus, she has a mouth like a trucker, the crews love her, and she really makes the set fun to be on. She has a way of cutting through all of the b.s.; even though we had two big actors, whenever Rene would come on the set, any tension that would be there would dissipate.''

There's a lady present!

De Niro (whom she previously worked with on ``The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle'') and Murphy are only two of the superstars that Russo has kept in line over the years. Others include Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood, John Travolta, Kevin Costner, Dustin Hoffman and Pierce Brosnan, and by screen evidence she disarmed them all.

To Russo, it's all a matter of figuring out how to play nice with big, talented egos.

``Usually, you only work with one actor, and you get into a rhythm with how they work,'' she explains, before launching enthusiastically into a recap of the ``Showtime'' experience. ``The fun thing about these two is that they're both E rides, but they're different. Eddie is really high energy; he's so quick-response that it fed me energy. The more excited he would get, the more excited I would get, until he was like 'SHOWTIME!' and I would be 'YES!' And the room was LIKE THAT!

``De Niro, a totally different thing. He is so totally dry, and when he delivers a line, it is so straight. That's really, really hard to do. There is an art to that; sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can't. But Bob's got the gift. He doesn't try to push it, he comes from such an honest place. So, working with him, he was like the straight person and I could have more energy.''

No big deal

Perhaps growing up in Hollywood's back yard is one reason why Russo doesn't get intimidated by high-powered co-stars; heck, she even went to school with a famous actor (more on that later). But it also has to do with the self-confidence Russo developed during a successful career that famously began when, as a teen-ager, she was picked out of the crowd at a Rolling Stones concert by a modeling agent.

``The truth is that I don't take myself that seriously, or this business,'' she explains. ``I'm grateful for it and I'm thankful for it. Since I was 17, I've been in front of the camera and in the public eye in some way. There are a lot of blessings in it, but I know what it is inside and out. This business is no fantasy world to me; it's not the golden idol that most of the world looks up to. I'm just like anybody else, and every actor I've ever worked with is just like anyone else. We just happen to be up there on screen and have that gig, pretty much.''

Russo's attitude extends to her taste in comedy. ``Showtime'' isn't her first show-biz satire; ``Get Shorty'' lampooned Hollywood pretensions with the best of them. But while she admits she understood the target of the earlier film better, she's pretty sure that the new one takes well-deserved shots.

``I have to say, I really haven't seen much reality TV,'' Russo confesses. ``I've seen 'Fear Factor,' but I really couldn't get into the other ones; they're like soap operas. I suppose, if you get to know the people, they'd be fun. But I have too much to do at night. I've got my kid's homework - she's teaching me how to spell; she's 7.

The reality of growing up on the wrong side of Burbank - she was raised by her mom after her mechanic-turned-sculptor father abandoned the family when Rene was 2 - was clearly a factor in forming the future actress' outlook, too. But Russo downplays the geographic influence.

``To be honest, I think I could've been born anywhere,'' she reckons. ``I'm not so sure Southern California had any effect on me. My mom had an effect, not having a father probably had some effect, the neighborhood I was raised in had an influence; we didn't have a lot of money. ... I'm not saying that those were bad things, it's just the world that I lived in.

``Then I wore a body cast as a kid for four years, so that was a formative and difficult time in my life. I was a loner kid, didn't really socialize very well; it was a little bit of an oppressive childhood. I can't say it was a great childhood. I think that I was older forever, that I was always an adult pretending to be a kid, in a way. I never remember being carefree.''

Must be making up for lost time now. But one valuable outgrowth of that restricted childhood was a habit that serves any actor well.

``I'm not so sure that I developed an imagination, but what I was was an observer,'' Russo says. ``People fascinated me.''

Rattled by reality

Even if she has matured into one of Hollywood's favorite good-time gals, Russo's sunny aplomb abandoned her on Sept. 11. Part of another ensemble comedy, ``Big Trouble,'' that was scheduled to be released 10 days after the terrorist attacks, she found herself in the unfamiliar position of being unable to carry the show on.

``I was supposed to be the first one back on Jay Leno,'' she recalls. ``But I called up Sept. 12 - they hadn't postponed the movie's release yet - and I said, 'I've always been a team player, I've never not helped promote a film, but I cannot publicize this film right now.' Luckily, I didn't have to.''

Disney's Touchstone Studios division delayed the release of the picture, which among other misadventures contained a plot line about two crooks unwittingly smuggling a nuclear device on board a commercial airplane. ``Big Trouble,'' which is based on a novel by humorist Dave Barry and co-stars Tim Allen, Tom Sizemore and Dennis Farina, is now set for release on April 5.

``I don't really think it's going to affect anybody, one way or the other,'' she figures now.

Classmates 

One thing Russo is certain of is who she wants to win this year's Academy Award for directing. It's somebody she's worked with, naturally enough. But he was also the big guy on campus who treated that troubled loner girl with uncommon decency back in the day.

``I saw 'A Beautiful Mind' and I really liked it,'' she says. ``I love Ron (Howard, who made ``Ransom''). He's so passionate about his work, too, and I envy that.

``And he was so lovely to me in school,'' she adds of the former child star. ``I was sort of in the geek club, and he was not in any club, actually, just able to float through them all. And he was lovely to everyone; he was a kind person, even then. There were some kind people in high school! Amazing.''

And so close to Hollywood, too. It's enough to make even a producer feel warm and cuddly.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) taking charge

Rene Russo holds her own against `Showtime's tough guys

(2) William Shatner revisits his days as TV cop T.J. Hooker, much to the amusement of producer Rene Russo, in ``Showtime.''