HE HOPES HE’S MR. RIGHT IN ‘TWO MRS. GRENVILLES’

Dominick Dunne, who wrote the best seller “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles,” which has now been turned into an NBC miniseries, came across an old print just before he went to London to visit the set.

“It was a picture of a young man with great sadness in his eyes,” said Dunne on the telephone from New York. “I thought, ‘This is just how I imagined Billy Grenville looking.’ And when I met Stephen Collins, who plays the role, the resemblance was remarkable.”

Fine. But looking right and being right for a role are very different things. How is Collins’ performance, pitted as he is against two very formidable actresses, Ann-Margret and Claudette Colbert?

“Very good,” said Dunne who, like other authors seeing their work translated to the screen, might be expected to carp. “I’m pleased.”

Collins, a blue-eyed actor with the cut-glass good looks, is crossing his fingers that Dunne is right.

And hoping that when “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles” airs Feb. 8 and 9--it is based on the story of Ann Woodward, who “accidentally” shot her husband in 1955 after mistaking him for a prowler--people will sit up and take notice.

“For me, it could be a beginning,” he said, sitting back barefoot in his West Hollywood apartment. “I’ve made some mistakes in my career, but this isn’t one of them.”

Collins, 39, made his movie debut in “All the President’s Men.” Most recently he appeared in “Brewster’s Millions” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” But he is mostly known for his TV work--”Inside the Third Reich,” “Chiefs” and “Tales of the Gold Monkey.” Little he has done, he says, has brought him the satisfaction he hoped for.

“Not long ago,” he said, “I looked at my resume of work and there were just too many ordinary performances there, too many things that weren’t surprising.

“I realized I’d done too much work I wasn’t proud of and I was embarrassed by that. I know how much better I can do. So I determined to go back to acting class in New York. And that I’ve done.”

When New York Times critic Vincent Canby tipped Collins as a bright new star six years ago, he wrote: “Collins is a first-rate character actor with a first-rate problem--he looks like a handsome young leading man, with a lot of the quality of the young Robert Redford.”

That, it seems, has often proved to be the problem.

“I read a script just the other night that I know I can play the daylights out of,” he said, “but the character is a construction worker and there’s no way I’d get it. I’ve been told too often, ‘We liked your reading best but we need to hide this character more.’ ”

When he was making “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles,” he said, Ann-Margret told him: “With your looks, nobody’s going to want to think you have any talent. Give them half a chance to think you haven’t, and they’ll run with that.”

“And that’s what’s happened too often,” said Collins. “I did things like ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ and it turned out to be my nightmare.

“I’d always known that I must never be seen in a role that was humorless and sexless. And here I was in a movie playing a humorless and sexless role (Decker, executive officer of the starship Enterprise) in a humorless, sexless movie.

“I’m sure it made a whole generation of studio people say, ‘Stephen Collins? My God--no.’ And I have to take the rap. I did it. I have done some things I’m proud of--’Summer Solstice’ with Henry Fonda and ‘The Henderson Monster’ with Christine Lahti. But they were for TV. Apart from those, I’ve done too many things that allowed people to doubt my talent. That’s why I’ve gone back to acting class.”

Collins, who has worked in theater both on and off Broadway, landed the role of Billy Grenville thanks to director John Erman, who remembered his test for the AIDS story “An Early Frost.”

“This is such a great part,” Collins said. “Even better than in the book, I think. In (Derek Marlowe’s) script, he’s very much more a part of what goes wrong with his marriage to Ann (played by Ann-Margret).”

Claudette Colbert was cast after Collins took the role, playing Alice Grenville.

“I’d always admired her, of course,” said Collins. “It still stuns me that she won her Oscar more than 50 years ago (“It Happened One Night,” 1934). And when she walked on the set, she looked fantastic.

“I’m just sorry that all her work was crammed into the first three weeks, so I didn’t get to know her as well as I’d have liked. But we did talk a lot. When I’m with someone like her, I immediately go into my Dick Cavett mode and ask all the questions I can think of. I did that only once before, when I was doing ‘The Rhinemann Exchange’ and John Huston came on to do a cameo role.”

The fact that Dominick Dunne, who has seen the series, thinks he is good in the role pleases Collins but does not convince him.

“I’ve heard that sort of thing too often,” he said. “Three times now studio executives have told me, ‘Don’t take another job until this movie comes out. This is it.’ I was told that about three different movies: ‘The Promise,’ ‘Star Trek--The Motion Picture’ and ‘Loving Couples.’ Each time nothing happened.

“In some ways, I feel the movie business is like a club and I’m still on the waiting list. The secretary says: ‘We have room for you but it’s only temporary. You can come in and use the club, but you can’t have a card.’

“So I just keep on working and, I hope, improving. I am optimistic about ‘The Two Mrs. Grenvilles’ because I got to work with two such marvelous actresses. I’m just beginning to realize what acting is all about.”