SONG-WRITING STEPHEN STILLS HAPPY TO FOCUS ON FAMILY.

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Music icon Stephen Stills is looking to make a career change after 30 years in the rock business. The reason: He wants to stay home.

Stills makes his entry into the TV tunesmithing trade with the theme song for ABC's February-debuting series, "Second Noah." He told us he's been "beating on this door a long time," trying to make inroads into writing music for television and film.

Decades of touring, as a solo act and with Crosby, Stills & Nash, have shown him, "the road is very hard on us. It's hard on relationships with children, and on relationships with adults."

Indeed, back in the late 1970s, Stills lost custody of his son Christopher to French ex-wife Veronique in a painfully drawn-out legal struggle - the judge cited the singer's frequent touring - and Christopher wound up moving to Paris with his mother full-time. Now Christopher is grown, "has his own band," and Stills says he sees him often.

The music man has a second shot at paternal fulfillment with his 7-year-old daughter Eleanor, via former wife Anne. He said, "I'm not going to miss the magic years this time. She's blossoming, this wonderful child."

He plans to take Eleanor to visit the "Second Noah" set in Tampa, Fla. "Even though I only wrote the song for the show, I'm totally immersed in it. I love it. It's like 'The Waltons' meets 'Dr. Doolittle,' " he said of the series about a family with eight adopted children - and a mother who's chief veterinarian at a wildlife preserve.

Stills notes that in "one of those cosmic coincidences that happen," the series' shooting location is Tampa's Herbert B. Plant High - Stills' alma mater.

Beached blonde: Gena Lee Nolin has been turning down film and telepic offers - "a few pretty big ones," she said - for the current "Baywatch" hiatus. That's because the fabulous beauty wants to learn to act. Or, that is, she wants to improve her ability to emote.

She candidly told us that when she landed her "Baywatch" gig, she asked producers of the show: "Are you sure you want me? I don't know how to act." And the response was: "Well, learn." So the former "Price Is Right" model took a crash four weeks of what she calls "Acting 101." And now she feels she could use more training.

Nolin is set to host the live, pay-per-view "Real Men Don't Watch Pre-Game" Super Bowl Sunday special Jan. 28 - which will feature teams of bouncing, bikini-clad babes in sports competitions, including a matchup of the Playboy Playmates and the Hooters Calendar Girls.

Nolin said one condition she had in taking on the pre-game job was that she didn't have to wear a bathing suit; she can wear shorts and a shirt.

He has the grapevine to thank: Jonathan Brandis said the first word he got that his "seaQuest 2032" series was going to be canceled came when people pitched him to do other projects.

"They were like, 'Read for this TV movie,' and I asked, 'When does it start?' "

When Brandis protested that "seaQuest" would be shooting over production dates that fell in March, his contacts said, "Well, we don't think you will. Word is out that it might get canceled." So it was, like, 'You gotta jump ship,' " he said.

The tip allowed the teen heartthrob to line up two back-to-back projects immediately - ABC's "Born Free: A New Adventure" telepic and the NBC movie "The Morning After." Both are expected to air in May.

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Photo Stephen Stills Songwriter, dad