SHOOTING STARS : Mercedes Ruehl Accepts Challenge of ‘Mob’

Connie Russo, the wife of the chief mafioso in director Jonathan Demme’s “Married to the Mob,” is about as subtle as a tornado, as patient as a wasp and as romantic as J. R. Ewing. But, to the credit of Mercedes Ruehl, who portrays Connie, she is--flaws and all--one of the film’s most sympathetic characters.

Maybe it’s because Ruehl--a New Yorker who studied under Uta Hagen--is the antithesis of Connie Russo. An acknowledged romantic, Ruehl said she nearly blew the “Married to the Mob” role by showing up for filming with a new perm that she got on impulse, a result of being “madly in love.”

The real trick to getting the part of Connie, she said, was overcoming her own embarrassment about the character’s salty dialogue.

“The first time I read the script, I thought, ‘The woman is such a vulgarian!’ ” she said. “I’d thought my first largish film part would be some romantic heroine, reclining on feather-down. I mean, the language really was a problem for me--I don’t swear a whole lot. But I said to myself while I was going over it: ‘I’ll take this role and read it like it an ingenue.’

“I thought at the time that this stratagem would pay off later--like when (Demme) did ‘Hedda Gabler’--but actually he loved the part read that way,” Ruehl continued. “At the audition, I thought, ‘He’s kidding me; he’s just being kind to a deranged actress.’ But that was really what he wanted.”

The image of the elemental, instinctive actress is rather far removed from Ruehl’s own careful, stage-honed professional background. Born in New York to an FBI agent father and homemaker mother, Ruehl moved frequently as a child, but after high school and college, she settled in Manhattan, first studying with Hagen, then with pioneering TV director Ted Danielewski. From there, it was on to stints at Off-Off-Broadway theater and regional theater companies in such places as Cleveland and Denver.

“The Denver experience (at the Denver Center Theatre) was the best of the regional rep tour,” Ruehl said. “I did two years of revolving repertory there, Corneille one week, Aeschylus the next. That stuff really keeps you on your toes; I got very nimble there.”

Ruehl’s performance as Medea in Denver was her breakout turn. It got her noticed in Los Angeles and New York. Roles with Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival and on Broadway followed, as did--more slowly--film roles, in “Four Friends,” “Heartburn,” “Radio Days” and “Big.”

“But I still haven’t gotten very far along the, you know, ‘This is my career ‘ attitude,” Ruehl said, almost apologetically. “I’m going to try to work for pennies when the work is interesting, but I just am gonna keep working.”

That credo is presently being sorely tested by her recent purchase of an Upper West Side condominium.

“Buying a house, I tell you, is an act of faith in your career. So what I’m trying to work out is the balance between the challenges you can still accept and the financial situation you’ve put yourself in.”

Somewhere in between was the role of Connie Russo. The high side of that challenge was working with Demme, whom she found “transparent in the best sense. He talks and listens to everybody, from producers to street people, exactly the same way. He has a sureness about him that makes the studio execs and the creative people happy. And that’s a pretty rare attribute.”

Still, she went on, there’s plenty of work in New York for flexible actresses to do, and her occasional film work--which may get less sporadic after “Married to the Mob” opens Aug. 19--will manage to keep the mortgage collectors at bay.

“But, I tell you, what people are saying about the death of legitimate theater in New York is greatly exaggerated,” Ruehl said. “You really have to try hard not to work around here. And if you try hard, like I’m gonna . . . well, then you could stay really busy.”