RODERICK MANN : FOR DUTCH ACTOR HAUER, THE ACCENT IS ALL AMERICAN

Rutger Hauer--blue eyes, blond hair and 200 pounds of solid muscle--looks like every young woman’s dream of a handsome European ski instructor.

So why is he working so diligently to lose his Dutch accent to pass himself off as an American?

“Because this is where I want to work,” he said the other morning. “And to have a career here, I must be able to play Americans.”

With the help of a dialogue coach, Hauer has almost shed his original accent. In his latest movie, “The Hitcher,” he’s actually playing an American. For him it’s a triumph. “Every actor is limited by his looks and his ability,” Hauer said. “So why be limited by an accent too?”

Since coming here after the success of his Dutch film “Soldier of Orange,” Hauer has portrayed a terrorist in “Nighthawks,” an alien in “Blade Runner,” a French count in “Eureka” and a German in “Inside the Third Reich”--all foreigners. His only role as a non-foreigner was that of a TV journalist, a naturalized American, in “The Osterman Weekend.”

And every time anyone said, “What a charming accent you have,” he groaned inside.

In “The Hitcher,” he thinks he’s made the breakthrough. He plays a menacing hitchhiker picked up by a murderer in the Mojave Desert.

“He’s such a chillingly bad guy that I couldn’t resist taking the role,” Hauer said. “But that’s the last--no more bad guys; I’m tired of them. That’s why I said no when Dick Donner first approached me to do ‘Ladyhawke.’ ” Donner originally wanted Hauer to play the wicked Marquet (Ken Hutchison eventually got the role). “No thanks,” Hauer told him, “but I wouldn’t mind playing the good guy (Etienne of Navarre).” “Sorry,” Donner said, “we want a younger man for that.”

“Then a week before they began shooting in Italy, the actor they’d picked walked out, deciding he just wasn’t up to it,” Hauer said. “So Dick telephoned me. And I wound up playing the role after all.”

This week, shooting on “The Hitcher” having finished, Hauer said goodby to the desert and flew home to Holland where he lives on a farm.

“The Dutch think it’s wonderful that one of their actors has made a success over here,” he said, “but until people see ‘The Hitcher’ and accept me as an American, I won’t really feel I’ve made it.”

NO HOLDS BARRED: Don Siegel, the feisty, 72-year-old director so beloved by cineastes for his improvisatory style, is writing his memoirs. Should everybody duck?

“Well,” he said, “I am being rather candid. I see no point in doing this otherwise.”

So the man who directed “Riot in Cell Block 11,” the first “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “Dirty Harry” is putting down the truth--as he sees it. From what I gather, some people will not fare too well, particularly studio boss Jack L. Warner. “He hated me,” says Siegel, “and I disliked him thoroughly.”

It will be interesting to see how he handles the likes of John Wayne and Bette Midler. He and Wayne didn’t get along during “The Shootist,” and he and Midler didn’t get along on “Jinxed.”