THANDIE'S MISSION COMPLETE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

What's a nice, Cambridge-educated arthouse flower like Thandie Newton doing in the fuel-injected commercial head-banger ``M:I-2''?

Having a pretty good time, according to the usually lithe (now 5 months pregnant) British actress, and trying to inject a modicum of humanity into the John Woo-directed, Tom Cruise adrenaline fest.

``Completely out of the blue, I got a call from my agent to meet Tom and John at a hotel in London for 'Mission: Impossible 2,' and I just thought it was a fantastic idea,'' the 27-year-old Newton says of the widely hyped sequel, which has already grossed more than $130 millionin 12 days - a number which probably surpasses that of all her previous films combined (if you don't count her first Cruise collaboration, ``Interview With the Vampire,'' in which she had a small role). ``The combination of John Woo's style and Tom Cruise just seemed perfect.

``I'd known Tom for a few years and was completely in awe of John, which made it really exciting,'' Newton adds, admitting that, though no action-film fan, she finds the Hong Kong director's hyper-aestheticized approach to violence and melodrama enchanting. ``They told me how they wanted the film to be more of a love story, which sounded great to me.''

In what passes for a narrative between ``M:I-2's'' action explosions, Newton plays Nyah Hall, a master jewel thief recruited by Cruise's superspy Ethan Hunt to help stop her former lover, Dougray Scott's Sean Ambrose, from unleashing a deadly supervirus in Sydney, Australia.

To complicate matters, Hunt and Hall fall in love before he places her in extreme physical and emotional jeopardy. While she gets in on some of the action - a little cliffhanging, a ridiculous but nonetheless erotically turbo-charged car race down a curvy road - Newton's main assignment is to provide the abstract demolition derby with something resembling heart and feeling.

Not an easy commission in a production machine-tooled to showcase its male star's (who was also one of its producers) athletic derring-do.

``You look a lot, you do a lot of homework to find a leading lady for Tom,'' says Cruise's producing partner Paula Wagner. ``Thandie Newton is a phenomenal actress, and we'd been watching her work for quite a while. Interestingly enough, (Cruise's wife) Nicole Kidman had worked with her in 'Flirting' and was very supportive of this idea. But we had been looking, and we wanted to find somebody interesting who had depth and range and a certain kind of sophistication, a sense of elegance and fun and that kind of mysterious beauty that she has. We just fell in love with her.''

One consideration that evidently remained unmentioned throughout casting and production was race. Newton, whose mother is Zimbabwean and whose father is English, is never once identified as a person of African heritage in the film.

Which she, with characteristic enthusiasm, approved of, especially in light of a career that's been defined by race-identified roles.

``It's not important to the story; what's important are other things about the person,'' she notes. ``Which is groundbreaking, sure, because often the predominant factor seems to be color, when there is so much more that is really intriguing about a person. You don't really know anything by knowing someone's color; you know nothing, in fact. So it's just the smart thing to do to think beyond that.

``Plus, it looks good, too,'' she adds with a laugh. ``It's kind of exotic and suggests a bigger world.''

Newton, who trained to become a dancer before injuries redirected her interests toward acting and her university subject, anthropology, was 16 when she made her movie debut in ``Flirting'' as an African exchange student at an Australian boarding school.

She went on to play American slaves, the famous Sally Hemings among them, in ``Jefferson in Paris,'' ``The Journey of August King'' and ``Vampire,'' and the demonic spirit of a slave's murdered daughter in Oprah Winfrey's film adaptation of Toni Morrison's ``Beloved.'' Last year, she was seen as an African political refugee in Italy, who is reluctantly drawn into an obsessive relationship with an English composer in Bernardo Bertolucci's ``Besieged.''

That performance, which Newton based to some degree on her mother, now bears unfortunate real-life echoes. The current socio-economic strife in Zimbabwe, which is leading to increased political and ethnic violence as a crucial election approaches, troubles Newton greatly.

``All my family is there,'' she says. ``What you see in the news tends to be the hot zones of unrest; all we've got is the phone, and I get on there to make sure that my relatives aren't involved. But it's a frightening time and it's hard to imagine it happening, because it's such a beautiful part of the world. It was, up until this, a place which was really something to be proud of. Not that I'm not proud of Zimbabwe now, but I just feel terribly sorry for the civilians who are caught up in the unrest. It had to happen at some point, I guess.''

The future holds more pleasant prospects at home in London. Besides expecting their first child, Newton and her screenwriter husband, Ol Parker, are looking forward to the release of a suspense-comedy they worked on together called ``It Was an Accident.'' They're also building a house, a process the symbol of international film glamour says she revels in.

``I'm really involved in all the aspects of building it,'' she explains. ``I love to paint, I love carpentry, I love making things. I'm the most unglamorous person ... If you come to my house, you'll find me in a pair of overalls with a piece of wood in one hand and sandpaper in the other. That's when I feel most happy.''

Gee, and we thought dangling from a teetering car over a steep, rocky canyon was the most fun any actress could dream of having.

``Believe me, that was terrifying,'' Newton says. ``I mean, it was all safe, there were a few ropes tied to me to keep me from tumbling all the way down. But I did have to fall out of the car and hang there.

``And they scheduled that whole thing for my last day of shooting,'' she says with comically exaggerated indignation, ``which I thought was a bit tactless. I guess it was just in case anything went wrong.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Thandie is dandy

Smash hit 'M:I-2' finally puts acclaimed actress in a glamorous light

(2) After learning John Woo would be directing and her friend Tom Cruise would be starring in ``M:I-2,'' Thandie Newton agreed to join the cast, saying, ``I just thought it was a fantastic idea.''

(3) Newton stars as Nyah Hall, a master jewel thief enlisted to help stop her ex-lover Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott, right) from turning loose a deadly supervirus Down Under in "M:I-2.".