MARK HARMON’S ACTING FACE

When he was UCLA’s star quarterback, Mark Harmon put on his football face. “When you’re an athlete and someone punches you in the mouth,” Harmon says, “you spit back two teeth and say, ‘Is that all the harder you can hit me?’ ”

Then, when he was making it as an actor on “St. Elsewhere,” he put on his pretty face. Equally successful here, he got named 1986’s “sexiest man alive” by People magazine--a title he dismisses with a laugh but one that Coors Beer, which employs him as its official television spokesman, undoubtedly relishes.

For his latest, most demanding role in NBC’s two-part TV movie “The Deliberate Stranger,” airing on Channel 4 Sunday and next Monday at 9 p.m., Harmon puts on a poker face to portray mass murderer Ted Bundy. Bundy, convicted of murdering three women and suspected of killing at least another 25, is now in a Florida prison awaiting execution.

Before he was arrested, Bundy had been described as “a model young man and perfect son” by those who knew him. “He was the guy you hoped your daughter would bring home as a prospective husband,” observes Harmon, a 34-year-old bachelor many parents might describe in similar terms. But Bundy was so hard to read that he charmed women to their deaths.

Harmon himself is not quite as inscrutable. His natural charm puts strangers at ease. But it masks an interior grittiness that still motivates him long after he stopped banging heads on the football field.

The son of All-American football player and broadcaster Tom Harmon and actress Elyse Knox, Harmon was born competitive. “As a kid, sports was what I did on weekends,” he says. “I just had a lot of that kind of energy to burn.

“I’d always dreamed about being able to compete (athletically) because it was such fun. When it got close to not being fun, I knew it was time to walk away. Those guys who went and played football made all this money. I said no. I was going to go to law school and burn out as a student.

“Then I decided I just wanted to act. But I couldn’t admit that to anyone until I felt I had something to peddle. So I set a course for myself. I took classes at night. During the day I was a carpenter and a salesman.”

Now, 13 years after he surprised his UCLA fans by spurning pro football offers, Harmon feels he’s hit his stride with acting. “People would expect me to downgrade the athletic competition experience,” he acknowledges. “Gosh, it made sense to me to change stroke and start doing what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

“When I started acting classes, I had a lot of walls to get through. Talk about a duck out of water. When I went to my first meeting--whoa! I didn’t know what was going on.

“Very few people succeed in one thing, let alone two. I’ve always been a highly motivated individual. I’ve never attacked anything as a lark. I wasn’t raised that way.

“I wasn’t a natural anything as an athlete. I just worked hard. I believe luck is earned. But you’ve got to be ready when you’re called on. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about something. I’m more apt to go out and do it.”

In his quest for acting fame, Harmon survived the series “240-Robert,” after which “I got offered every big city cop or all-American kid part,” and “Flamingo Road.”

“In retrospect,” he says, “I’m grateful for ‘Flamingo Road.’ The cancellation (in 1982) forced me finally to stop talking about going back to the stage and actually go. That was the turning point in my career.”

Harmon spent six months in Toronto in “Key Exchange,” returning to Los Angeles for Mark Medoff’s “The Wager.” Then came the offer to play Dr. Robert Caldwell on “St. Elsewhere.” After 2 1/2 seasons of womanizing up and down hospital corridors, Caldwell contracted AIDS and left the series in February in a blaze of publicity.

Almost immediately, Harmon moved on to the Ted Bundy role. He seems unperturbed to be playing a part that audiences might find distasteful. “This is the story of the pursuit of Ted Bundy, as opposed to the Ted Bundy story. I like playing regular people. There’s a part of Ted Bundy that’s really regular. He could be your next-door neighbor.”

In order to portray Bundy, Harmon found himself in the unusual position of “trying hard not to make a judgment on Bundy’s guilt,” he says. “Bundy has been tried and convicted of three murders and sentenced to die in the electric chair.

“The American system of justice says guilt has to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. There’s always been doubt in this case. Ted Bundy did not leave enough evidence behind to be convicted. He thinks he’s a victim. He feels the system let him down. Speaking as the character, ‘If you give me 20 minutes, I’ll convince you I’m innocent. What did I do?’ ”

A smile flashes briefly across the actor’s face. It’s just possible to believe that this pleasant, handsome fellow could have evil on his mind.

“Bundy’s case and character are so unusual,” Harmon continues. “He’s not a simple psychotic or schizophrenic. Here I am as an actor trying to get an angle on someone whom psychologists have been trying to get an angle on for 15 years.

“I tried to meet him but was told I couldn’t. That’s OK. I don’t know who I would have met. I imagine I’d have seen the side everyone else saw--the charming side.”