TV ACTORS GET COMFORTABLE IN THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR : Some TV directors have expressed concern about stars taking up so many of the limited number of directing slots.

James Brolin, star of ABC’s “Hotel,” pulled his co-star,, Connie Sellecca, toward him as she whispered seductively about the fine points of Puccini’s “La Boheme,” playing in the background.

She leaned over and blew out one candle and then another. The lighting on the Burbank sound stage dimmed. They drew closer.

But as their lips started to touch, Brolin shifted Sellecca’s head to catch a reflection and shouted into her face, “How’s the lighting now?”

Those words were not in the script, and they were aimed not at Sellecca but at the camera crew 10 feet behind her. Brolin was not only acting in the episode being rehearsed, but directing it. It is the eighth episode he has directed since making his directorial debut two seasons ago.

He’s joined a club that the Directors Guild of America reports is becoming less exclusive: TV actors who direct episodes of their own series.

Don Johnson made his directorial debut on “Miami Vice” last season. So did Edward James Olmos on the same series, Kate Jackson on “Scarecrow and Mrs. King,” Linda Gray on “Dallas” and John Larroquette on “Night Court.”

Other actor-directors on current series are Robert Foxworth of “Falcon Crest,” Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy of “Dallas,” Roger Mosley of “Magnum, P.I.,” Gerald McRaney of “Simon & Simon,” William Daniels and Eric Laneuville of “St. Elsewhere,” Michael Landon and Victor French of “Highway to Heaven,” Al Waxman of “Cagney & Lacey” and Tony Danza and Katherine Helmond of “Who’s the Boss?”

Many industry observers say directing has become a plum for stars who need to be kept happy. Michael Franklin, executive director of the Directors Guild, said some TV directors have expressed concern about stars taking up so many of the limited number of directing slots. “We have not taken a position,” Franklin said.

And executive producers do not necessarily like tossing this particular plum to their stars.

“It takes up a great deal of their time and energy,” said “Dallas” executive producer Leonard Katzman. “I would be just as happy if shows were written by writers and directed by directors and acted by actors.” There’s also the fear that permitting one actor to direct can open a floodgate: “Dallas’ ” Steve Kanaly and Ken Kercheval will each direct their first episode this season, bringing to five the number of series regulars whose contracts guarantee them directorial assignments.

“Any of the actors that get a certain amount of clout want to direct,” Katzman said, referring to the industry at large. “I cannot tell you why.”

The answer is more for love than for money. The going rate for directors on hourlong episodic TV is $17,935 per episode, a pittance in contrast to the $1 million to $2 million a year that many top series stars are paid.

But mostly, actors who consider themselves creative souls go behind the cameras out of sheer boredom.

“I felt I had to do it as--if you’ll excuse me--an artist,” Jackson said last week, shortly after directing a “Scarecrow” episode. “Every day I’m this character Amanda King, and I can get a little tired of her. She can bore me stiff after a while.”

Jackson keeps a cinematography manual and books like “People Skills” by Robert Bolton close at hand in her motor home on the Warner Bros. lot. Asked about her qualifications as a director, she pointed to 10 seasons on series TV during which, she said, she learned such things as “the difference between when you pan with somebody and when you dolly with them.”

Danza had watched Danny DeVito step behind the cameras on “Taxi,” in which they both starred, and liked the idea of having “your own baby to mold.” Danza echoed the sentiments of most of the actor-directors interviewed when he cited as his main qualification, “I can talk to actors just as good as anybody.”

Brolin originally wanted to be a director, but “couldn’t get a job.” Even after becoming an actor, “I always made Super-8 films,” he said. Now, he’s often seen with pages of stick-figures and arrows hanging out of his pocket, his method of storyboarding the episodes he directs.

“It’s a strangely seductive undertaking,” said Johnson from his Miami home. But not everyone, he said, is up to the “monumental” task. “You have to be slightly crazed or megalomaniacal and I qualify on both those counts.”

Are these actor-directors dilettantes?

Some of the TV actors, directors and producers contacted suggested that there might be some stars who, in the words of veteran director and Directors Guild board member Jack Shea, might be “just flitting with the job” of directing.

On the other hand, Shea said, directors generally come to the field via “an interest in the performing arts.” Though the Directors Guild has no firm figures on the subject, estimates from guild members range as high as 80% for the number of working directors who started out as actors of some kind.

Not surprisingly, every actor-director contacted spoke of his or her own serious intentions. They want to better understand the film-making process, or they’re thinking about short films or music videos, or their agents are looking for made-for-TV movies for them to direct en route to feature-film assignments.

Most also acknowledge that they have access to an on-the-job training that other aspiring directors can’t easily get. “I’m sure there are people working their way up through the Directors Guild the proper way, but that’s just the way this game is played,” said Duffy, who has directed 13 “Dallas” episodes. His new contract with the show, to which he returns this fall after a season’s absence, calls for him to direct at least three episodes a year.

Duffy is credited by co-workers with keeping a loose, relaxed set--a necessity, many actors say, if they are to to give their best performances. “Patrick is a very good director,” said Hagman, who started his directing career on his “I Dream of Jeannie” series and later directed the movie “Return of the Blob” before becoming “Dallas’ ” nefarious J. R. Ewing. “He never pushes,” Hagman said. “He has a great sense of humor. If you have a problem he can laugh you out of it.”

Not all behind-the-camera actors have directing spelled out as a contractual perquisite. Foxworth was given a flat “no” at the end of “Falcon Crest’s” first season, but after a “calm and reasoned discussion” then-Lorimar-President Lee Rich gave him the go-ahead. He has since directed nine episodes, and he thinks he knows why producers discourage the practice. “They don’t want to give actors any more control or power than possible,” he said.

The actors speak not of control but of “fulfillment” and “gratification” from their directorial experiences. Brolin said his posture improves on weeks when he’s directing. “Scarecrow” insiders said that when Jackson directs, she seems the happiest.

Most actors find directing to be exhausting, too.

“Stimulating, exciting, tiring,” is how Gray summed up the experience. Her most useful advice came from a director friend who told her to “get the best pair of tennis shoes you can find.”

There is a safety net beneath any novice TV director, and that is the fact that an established series comes with a preordained style, a cast that knows the characters and a crew used to working as a unit.

Still, there is enough flexibility, actor-directors say, for them to have discernible styles.

“Miami Vice’s” Olmos said he “definitely nailed the camera down,” concentrating on dramatic intensity rather than fast-paced action. “Bushido” turned out to be one of the more compelling of last season’s episodes, and one which Olmos believes “opens up the possibilities of ‘Miami Vice.’ ”

Waxman, the gruff Lt. Samuels on “Cagney & Lacey,” refers to a “fluid” cinematic style. “There’s a kind of closeness and reality I get in performance and relationship and behavior.”

Things don’t always work out perfectly though. Gray received some criticism for the way a death scene worked out. “There are mistakes (in her episode) that any first-time director is going to make,” said executive producer Katzman, who was not with the show during Gray’s trial by fire. (He also noted that Gray came to the task well prepared; she spent a semester in a UCLA directing course and then studied privately with director Lilyan Chauvin.)

Of the three “Cagney & Lacey” episodes directed by Waxman, who has directed numerous shows in his native Canada, executive producer Barney Rosenzweig said he thought that one about entrapment “did not have some of the impact I thought it should have.”

Rosenzweig said Waxman is a capable director, one whose work on an episode about drunk driving was “excellent.” But he said the incident on the “Entrapment” episode illustrates one of the dangers of having an actor direct his own show: “If I don’t like Al’s work as a director, I still have to deal with him as a star of my series. I hurt his feelings on ‘Entrapment.’ ”

There’s another possible downside to the careers of actors who direct, according to ICM agent Bill Robinson, who handles “Dallas’ ” Gray: Other directors might fear that they’ll be know-it-alls on the set. “There are quite a lot of people reluctant to hire actors who envision themselves as directors,” Robinson said. “They think there’s more room for conflict there.”

That’s a chance that Robinson thought made sense for his client to take. Directing “Dallas,” he said, makes Gray “a director, as opposed to somebody who wants to direct. She could end up, seven or eight years from now, being recognized as a director in the same way she’s recognized as an actor.”

The tradition of TV stars directing suggests that there’s life after the cover of TV Guide for actors with the requisite talent and drive.

Alan Alda, who first directed episodes of “MASH,” parlayed that skill into his current feature-film career, having written and directed two films, “The Four Seasons” and “Sweet Liberty.” William Shatner cut his teeth behind the cameras on “T.J. Hooker” and is now said to be the front-runner to direct the next “Star Trek” feature following the release of “Star Trek IV,” in which he stars.

Paul Michael Glaser took a cut in income because he chose to pursue directing full time instead of acting regularly after five directorial stints on “Starsky & Hutch.” “If you have a sense of camera, of composition, a point of view that permeates all aspects of the process, then (your TV series) becomes a very viable workshop,” said Glaser. He’s directed four hours of “Miami Vice” and the film “Band of the Hand” for “Vice” executive producer Michael Mann.

Directing experience is part of Michael Landon’s clout. He is the exceedingly rare quadruple-threat: executive producer, writer, star and director on the hit show “Highway to Heaven.”

Landon wrangled his first directorial assignment from producer David Dortort 23 years ago when he was starring as Little Joe on “Bonanza.” Now that he’s the boss, he’s given himself 17 “Highway” episodes to direct out of the 24 to air this season.

Landon, observed recently while acting and directing at a downtown courthouse, seemingly switches hats with ease, communicating to cast and crew in the same low-key manner as he delivers his lines as the angel Jonathan.

But on weightier dramas, the actor-director’s in-front-of-the-camera chores often take a back seat.

Robert Culp, who wrote and directed several episodes of “I Spy” and still considers directing “an ongoing lifetime career,” likens directing oneself to being aboard “two trains going in opposite directions. The job of the actor is to blank everything out so that the infant walks into a scene for the first time; the director has to hold the reins constantly.”

Culp believes that most actor-directors “do the acting mechanically--and it shows.”

“Miami Vice’s” Johnson, asked if his character Sonny Crockett got short shrift when he was directing, said, “No . . . but let me put it this way, I wouldn’t say I stretched him any either.”

Foxworth found himself “almost embarrassed to be acting” on the first episode he directed. “All of a sudden, there’s somebody adjusting your makeup and fixing your hair.”

Larroquette’s experience directing himself illustrates why most actors who direct are to be found in filmed, hourlong series rather videotaped comedies such as “Night Court,” in which he co-stars. Directors of videotaped shows normally sit in a booth, from where they watch several TV screens. For Larroquette, the monitor screens had to be moved to the stage, where he could simultaneously watch them and block shots, including those of himself.

On “Who’s the Boss?,” Danza took a co-directing credit, allowing associate director Gail Bergman to watch the monitors and call the shots when he was on stage.

“In comparison to some of the work that (feature) film directors out there do, you’re hard-pressed to call yourself a director,” Danza said. But he added, “I got my Directors Guild card, and you can go down to their screenings. They even gave me a jacket. You feel pretty cool.”