THE FINE LINE BETWEEN FILM STARS AND ACTORS

Although the images they’d perfected are mercifully indelible, the final loss in these past few months of Fred Astaire, of Rita Hayworth, and of Cary Grant is enough to make one howl in dispair: are we ever going to have Movie Stars for grown-ups again? Not muscle men or Tiger Beat heartthrobs or young things from the Brat Pack Ladies’ Auxiliary, but actors who combined an aura of glamour and mystery with a certain shameless physicality.

The time hasn’t exactly been ripe for such an old-fashioned item. For years, the kitchen sink, anti-heroic actors seemed to do just fine. They matched our distinctly anti-heroic times; some of them had a tingle of charisma, most of them were actors, but precious few of them were stars. How could they be when they looked so much like us, or the friendly lug across the street?

But while we watch our country march back (some might say backward) to comforting images, recognized conventions, to a climate of hero worship, we’ve had one unexpected plus: before our eyes two bona fide actors--Kim Basinger and Kevin Costner--have turned into full-fledged, old-fashioned movie stars.

We’ve had hints of this elusive, electric quality in their work before; neither of them is what you’d call an overnight success. But in each case, one specific film turned the trick: For Basinger, it’s “Nadine,” a hilarious mash note to Texas womanhood by writer-director Robert Benton; for Costner, it’s his role in “No Way Out,” directed by Roger Donaldson.

They are sort of summoning-forth roles that give a focus to each actor’s special qualities: Basinger has developed a comic adorability that makes men and women feel protective of her, and Costner has, in addition to a nice, dry wit, an enormous, quiet authority and a sense that there’s always a little something kept in reserve. It’s interesting to see that both parts have enormous physical demands to them as well as a nicely sustained sexual tension.

Robert Altman was the first to give the exquisite Basinger a role that hinted at her full range, in “Fool for Love.” Until that time, she had simply seemed self-possessed, arresting and nicely humorous whether she was decorating a Bond movie or a Blake Edwards Truffaut retread. Now, her full variety was suggested: pathos, fierceness, humor, an unsparing honesty and an extraordinarily haunting quality.

With “9 1/2 Weeks” and, more crucially, with “Blind Date,” it became clear that Basinger had another absolute star requisite: She was unbesmirchable. She didn’t pull back or make herself aloof from “Blind Date’s” excruciating demands; she gave herself to them completely and she was lovable in spite of them.

That’s a vital quality, for a woman particularly. It allows audiences to feel protective toward an actress, no matter how fine the mess she’s gotten them into. In this respect, it’s the quality that Basinger shares with Marilyn Monroe--although the suspicion is pretty strong that Basinger’s comic and dramatic range can eclipse the adorable Monroe’s.

In the case of Kevin Costner as a naval hero in a maelstrom of love and murder in “No Way Out,” the actor of comparison is Gary Cooper. Costner is less reticent and less purely beautiful to behold, yet both men seem to share a cool, deeply American strength, part candor, part quiet humorousness. And like Cooper, Costner can take on the burden of a hero’s role with the ease of shrugging into a favorite baggy-at-the-elbows jacket.

Costner may have been particularly fortunate in that “No Way Out” director Roger Donaldson seems to savor and bring the best from very strong, sometimes offbeat men: Bruno Lawrence in “Smash Palace,” Mel Gibson in “The Bounty.”

As written, Costner’s role in “The Untouchables” might have been the actor’s great breakthrough, but director Brian De Palma was far more interested in his story’s mavericks--in Al Capone and in Sean Connery’s quietly encyclopedic street cop--and he gave Costner’s Eliot Ness a plywood rigidity that is not the stuff of stardom.

To see the spark that Donaldson glimpsed in Costner, you’d have to go back to the actor’s earlier movies--moments of sweetness combined with brash confidence in “Fandango” by director Kevin Reynolds, or in some of Lawrence Kasdan’s “Silverado.” (Had writer-director Kasdan allowed Costner’s character to actually be killed off in “Silverado,” he might have registered with the kind of tragic impact audiences remember.)

You can’t will stardom and you can’t train for it. Even wanting it desperately doesn’t make a bit of difference; in fact, the strain shows. And the line between actor/movie star is weird and arbitrary; you don’t even have to be a remarkable actor to be a star although, in contrast to the ‘40s and ‘50s, most of our stars today are both. Jessica Lange is an actress/movie star; Kathleen Turner is an actress. Jack Nicholson is an actor/movie star; Jeff Bridges is an actor. Stardom is most certainly an animal presence and it requires either a total lack of self-consciousness, or enough innate knowledge of and intimacy with the camera to consider it as a sort of loving accomplice (the kind of relationship Lillian Gish has with a camera lens). Refraction of light seems to be one of its qualities.

What the screen has in Basinger and Costner is definitely two new stars: two who are capable of generating that incalculably precious I’ll-see-anything-they’re-in devotion from an audience.

Only two? We have two other potential break-through roles this month: Madonna’s bid for the Monroe image in “Who’s That Girl” on the heels of her vastly successful tour, and Peter Coyote in “A Man in Love” as a magnetic actor who becomes deeply involved with his young co-star, Greta Scacchi. What about them?

Alas, no, in both cases. Even her devotees deserted Madonna opening-day afternoon on Hollywood Boulevard--having mysteriously gotten the buzz on the movie. Skipping, mugging, chain-smoking and shoplifting her way through this strained abomination, Madonna has been disastrously served by every frame of “Who’s That Girl,” whose only virtue seems to be that time spent watching it takes off the time you have to spend in hell. Star-making it’s not.

And as an international superstar, Coyote is oddly unmainstream. It’s odd: He has the edge, the complexity, the sexual adeptness, even the flashes of temper needed to make him believable, but we also have to see a romantic tenderness to this s.o.b., and that is held in tight, intellectual check.

Is there anyone warming up, needing only that one last great showcase? Two names come to mind quickly: Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day Lewis. Perhaps Dennis Quaid, particularly in “The Big Easy,” if he doesn’t slip into that All-American nice-guy affability that seems to have kept Jeff Bridges from reaching true stardom. Perhaps John Lone, with “The Last Emperor” and “The Moderns,” or Timothy Dalton if he’s given a chance beyond Bond. Maybe, in sheer terms of personality and the way the camera picks up radiance from her, young Emily Lloyd from “Wish You Were Here,” although one movie isn’t quite information enough. But all this speculation is what keeps a constant moviegoer’s heart from atrophying, and surprise is as much a part of the equation as optimism.