Barkin

By RICHARD CORLISS

Her name is Helen, as in Hell 'n' back. Allure and danger play on the dramatic planes of her wide-screen face, which looks like Diane Sawyer's pressed against a windshield. When her lips crack open into a wide, diagonal smile, some Mae West line seems ready to emerge. "Come up and see me sometime." And Frank Keller (Al Pacino), a good cop with no life, does just that. Though Helen is a suspect in the grisly murder case he is investigating, he can't wait to get to her. The feeling must be mutual: before making love to Frank, she strips off her red jacket with the urgency of a lifeguard en route to a rescue. They fight viciously, then lurch into a mad pash. She solders herself to his back; she climbs the wall, elevated by lust. Later, Frank awakes dazed and guesses, "I must have fainted. I'm gonna have to be airlifted to the standing position."

Moviegoers at the new hit Sea of Love check out Helen and think, What a woman. Got to be a killer.

Killer actress, please. We speak of Ellen Barkin, 35, who does more than curl men's toes. In her first film, Diner (1982), she played the young married whose husband rags her because she can't catalog his precious 45s. In Tender Mercies she was Robert Duvall's teen daughter. She righteously battled Dr. Lizardo in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and taught her sweet niece how to dance in Desert Bloom. Just now she is bookending her role in Sea with a turn as the triple-crossing ultrabitch in Walter Hill's Johnny Handsome. Tough? This babe can blast a robbery victim without blinking. And when her muscular creep crony pulls a gun on her, she stares back utterly unimpressed, as if to say, "Go on and shoot. My hide's so hard, the bullets'll bounce off."

This chameleonic actress has a lot going for her, starting with her eccentric good looks. "Taken apart, Ellen doesn't work," observes Martin Bregman, who produced Sea of Love. "But put it together, and you've got a stunning woman." Then she gives you Method intensity with treacherous glamour. As Sea's director, Harold Becker, notes, "Ellen is very real. She looks like she's lived, like she's earned her face." And her spurs. This is a ferociously bright, witty, serious actor who packs risk and surprise in every move. She will go bigger, badder, beyond. "So much of what makes her special," says Hill, "is her chance taking. She understands instinctively that the enemy of art is what passes for good taste."

The enemy of stardom too. For if celebrity is courting Barkin, it is partly due to the sizzling sex scenes that ornament her recent movies. As a prim D.A. in The Big Easy, she gets lessons in precision ecstasy from handy Dennis Quaid. A Barkin heroine will tussle with any man on even terms, perhaps to the death. In Mary Lambert's gorgeous, complex ghost story Siesta, Barkin is already dead, but that cannot stop her from a convulsive rendezvous with the aerialist of her dreams. Or from looking sensational in a stop-light red dress and a body sculpted by daily workouts. These two films, though, were cult objects for cinephiles and discriminating voyeurs. It took Sea of Love, which earned $40 million in its four weeks, to make her a pricey Hollywood commodity.

Tell Barkin she acts with her body, and she nonchalants, "Doesn't everyone?" But don't tell her that simulating sex onscreen is a performer's ultimate perk. "Sex scenes are the least fun to do," she notes. "Everyone's nervous. The crew's not yukking it up waiting to see your tit; they're uncomfortable with the whole procedure. The actors don't want to do it again and again. It's hard work. I have to figure out what my character wants, how her desires evolve at this point in the script. Then we have to block the scene. It's like choreographing a dance. You get the steps down."

Barkin, born into a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx ("Happy childhood," she recalls, "no divorces"), took a while to get the steps down. She is a confessed slow starter: "In kindergarten I sat before an easel and thought and thought. Then at the last minute I painted like mad." She graduated from Hunter College with a double major (history, drama) and planned to teach ancient history. But she continued with acting classes, and after seven years she was pushed into her first audition. O.K., an actor prepares, but for what and how long? "In retrospect, I'd have to say I was afraid to try. I was more than a little self-indulgent. What was I doing those seven years?"

The past seven years have been lucky for Barkin -- though not, as she sees it, for movies. "The film industry," she says, "is a boys' club that pays little attention to women, especially actresses. If you're a feminist, it's hard to find a script that doesn't offend you. If I'm not offended, that's as good as it's going to get. Greatness I don't hope for."

The conservative climate in Hollywood and beyond rankles Barkin. "Nobody wants to rock the boat. It's Mary Poppins again, choking the audience on a spoonful of sugar. Look at Working Girl and Wall Street: two-hour commercials for Reaganomics. In the '70s, movies produced the Duvalls, De Niros and Pacinos. But the ones selling tickets today are the new Troy Donahues and Tab Hunters. They're actors who don't go home with you. They can't compare with a great actor like Marlon Brando. When he's up there, he's telling a secret about himself that's not for sale."

It's no secret that Barkin can be a handful on the set, though her recent directors testify that she is warm, helpful and fun to work with. "I don't fight so much now," Barkin says. "I have less to prove." And more to love. Last year she wed Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, her romantic co-star in Siesta. And at present she is nine months pregnant with a baby Barkin-Byrne. So finally, perhaps, the new star and new mother can afford to modify her cynicism. She can dare to hope for greatness.

With reporting by Elaine Dutka/Los Angeles and Martha Smilgis/New York