LAYING DOWN A NEW LAW FOR GRITTY 'PINERO,' A HISTORY OF CLEAN-CUT ROLES DIDN'T SPOIL BRATT.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

Seeing Benjamin Bratt as vindictive and hollow-eyed poet Miguel Pinero, lying in decrepit vans and endlessly puncturing his skin with needles, it's easy to accept the ``Pinero'' star's claim that he's more than just another Hollywood pretty face.

Now if producers can just keep him out of uniform ...

Best known for a five season, Emmy-nominated stint as Detective Rey Curtis on ``Law & Order,'' Bratt usually manages to look great, carries a gun or wears a badge and invariably gets the girl. Bratt has paired with Sandra Bullock (``Miss Congeniality'') and Madonna (``The Next Best Thing''). And he dated Julia Roberts for several years.

Nestled in a Beverly Hills hotel suite, sporting an incomplete goatee and cheerfully quoting ``The Outlaw Josey Wales'' (``That's my favorite movie of Eastwood's''), Bratt isn't exactly complaining about his career trajectory, although he does wish things were different.

``This is a town that is quick to pigeonhole or stereotype individuals,'' says Bratt, 38. ``In my professional years as an actor, invariably I play a very straight-laced individual, a buttoned-down man in uniform. And that on a great level has informed what the industry in general thinks of my potential as an actor. The irony is, I don't really see myself as a leading man, which is usually how I get portrayed. I think my strength as a performer comes in when I'm presented with roles where I necessarily have to transform.''

The metamorphosis of Benjamin Bratt is on display in Leon Ichaso's ``Pinero,'' which opens today for a week-long Oscar qualifying run at the GCC Beverly Connection theatre in West Hollywood. Playing the controversial Puerto Rican poet/playwright Miguel Pinero, Bratt is mean, unattractive and tortured, anything but glamorous. And that's the way he likes it.

``Beyond hoping that people will actually get out and see this film, on a personal level, the main thing I'm hoping is that after seeing this, that past perception will be completely obliterated,'' he says laughing. ``I'm kicking the door open a little bit.''

``It's a new career from this point on,'' agrees Ichaso (``Crossover Dreams'' ``Sugar Hill''). ``Pinero's'' writer and director says, ``These are the roles that every actor likes. I don't think that roles like this come every day or are performed with such fire.''

Bratt was not Ichaso's first choice for the role and, in fact, Bratt initially called Ichaso to take himself out of the running, citing ``superficial reasons.'' Bratt was more than a foot taller than Pinero, who died in 1986. A San Francisco native, Bratt didn't think he should be playing a real-life character who had the streets of New York practically flowing through his veins.

``The self-doubt went away, but there was still a level of fear in approaching a role like this, mainly a fear of failure,'' said Bratt. ``It's not like some little theater piece you do in a (expletive) hole somewhere and if it's bad it goes away in a couple of weeks. If you lay down a mistake like that on film, it's something you're going to live with.''

Ichaso, who had immersed himself in researching Pinero's life of prostitutes, junkies and drugs, couldn't exactly envision Bratt in Pinero's skin either. That changed after he watched the 1997 film ``Follow Me Home,'' written and directed by Benjamin's brother, Peter. In the film, which co-stars Alfre Woodard, Bratt plays a crackhead East L.A. muralist with a shaven head, tattoos and prosthetic teeth.

No leap of faith

``That definitely gave me a glimpse of what I was looking for more than the 'Law & Order' detective,'' said Ichaso. ``After I had seen that totally dysfunctional kind of marginal character, it wasn't a leap of faith.''

Bratt remembers ``Follow Me Home'' fondly, since the role was another opportunity for him to pull off a major transformation. He expects there to be more such opportunities, even if he has to create them himself through the production company he formed with his brother.

Theater is a different animal, says the classically trained Bratt, who studied at University of California, Santa Barbara and at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. ``There's a kind of freedom that comes with performing on stage, that lack of restriction really that doesn't exist usually in film, and even less often in television,'' he says. ``But it's a while since I've done anything.''

Success and steadily increasing paychecks will keep a guy in front of the camera. Bratt's last time on the boards was in Shakespeare/L.A.'s 1992 production of ``A Midsummer Night's Dream'' at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in the summer of 1992. The version was set post- L.A. riots.

``That's a case in point where even within the confines of metered dialogue, the mathematical precision of Shakespeare, as far as interpretation goes in a theatrical setting, your boundaries are seemingly endless,'' says Bratt. ``Here we set a play written in the 1500s in post-riot L.A., and it completely worked.''

Company artistic director Ben Donenberg remembers Bratt as a passionate and skilled performer and isn't surprised to see the actor's career take off. Donenberg also remembers the appreciation from the audience during a scene when Bratt, as one of a quartet of lovers, stripped down to Calvin Klein skivvies.

``And he looked good,'' said Donenberg.

Actor for hire

Since then, Bratt's films have included ``The River Wild'' ``Clear and Present Danger,'' ``Red Planet'' and ``Traffic'' - often in roles with ``Lieutenant'' or ``Captain'' attached to his character's name.

``The reality is that I understand myself to be a hired gun,'' he says. ``Actors have very little power when it comes to creating opportunities for themselves. I've only gotten there recently where jobs come to me with a straight-up offer. As flattering as it is, it's still a waiting game waiting for those offers to come in.''

Bratt read much of Pinero's poetry and the works of other members of the New Yorican Poets Cafe co-founded by Pinero and Miguel Algarin - the only member of Pinero's circle who is still alive. Through Sing Sing prison, Bratt also got hold of some unpublished Pinero work that belonged to the poet's mentor, Miguel Martin. While in prison for petty theft, Pinero developed his best known work, the play ``Short Eyes,'' which was later produced at the Public Theatre. Six Tony Award nominations and a 1977 film of ``Short Eyes'' helped catapult Pinero's acting and writing career.

Even at the height of his fame, Pinero remained a slave to drugs, alcohol and the kind of fast living that drove him to an early grave at the age of 42. The character Bratt creates on screen is a swaggering presence, unabashedly and unapologetically himself.

``I like to believe, although I'm not certain of it, there was almost no self-editing going on with Pinero,'' says Bratt. ``He was not afraid of the darkness. In fact, he used it as a device to fuel his art, and he did consider himself an artist above all else.''

Gratefully unemployed since July, Bratt recently bought a home in San Francisco and has been dividing his time between New York and the Bay Area. He next appears in the psychological thriller ``Abandon,'' the directorial debut of ``Traffic'' screenwriter Steven Gaghan.

``Surprise, surprise, in it, I play a cop,'' says Bratt with a laugh. ``But there's a relative edge in that I'm a cop just out of 30 days of rehab.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) BRATT'S PACT

After success on `Law & Order,' Benjamin Bratt vowed to take chances with his career - then he found `Pinero'

(2) Benjamin Bratt, on a balcony at the L'Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills, has taken a new overview of his acting career.

(3) Bratt hopes his turn as poet Miguel Pinero in a new biographical film will open up his career to new, edgier roles.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer