Head First

Jean-Marc Barr took a major plunge with the part of champion undersea diver Jacques Mayol in French director Luc Besson’s current film “The Big Blue.”

The part, which required the lean San Diego native to dive more than 100 feet below the ocean surface off such exotic locales as Sicily, Greece, the French Riviera and the Bahamas, plucked Barr from the vast pool of supporting actors and cast him in a leading role opposite Rosanna Arquette.

“When I went for the screen test, the people I was up against were people like Mel Gibson, Nicolas Cage, Matthew Modine,” Barr says. “I wasn’t intimidated. I just didn’t think I had a chance.”

Barr, 27, who lives in London, said Besson was undaunted by his relative inexperience.

“You know, the guy wanted me, really wanted me , “ he says. “And because it was the film of his life, you can’t really say no to that.”

Barr, who was raised by a French mother and an American Air Force colonel father, went to Humboldt State and UCLA after graduating from San Diego’s Mission Bay High School in 1978, then studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and at London’s Guild Hall School of Music and Drama.

He had worked mostly on stage in London before being chosen by director John Boorman to play a Canadian soldier in last year’s Oscar-nominated “Hope and Glory.”

Barr also has had parts in the feature “French Lesson” and the TV movie “Going for the Gold: The Bill Johnson Story.” He’s also appeared in Richard Avedon commercials for Calvin Klein’s Obsession fragrance.

“I’m trying to build the bridge between the two continents in terms of my acting,” he says.

In the meantime, he’s savoring the fruits of his last project.

“I really made out on this deal,” he says, laughing. “I got to touch the dolphins, I got to touch Rosanna Arquette, and I got paid for it.”