Does Glover Really Want to Be a Bad Guy?

John Glover was so bad last year that he accumulated such tags as “The man moviegoers love to hate” (Playboy), “Everyone’s Favorite Bad Guy” (Premiere) and “The Prime Rotter of the ‘80s” (Pauline Kael).

The rub: Glover’s not so sure he wants to be crowned the King of Cads.

“I love it, but--well, I know there are some people who will abuse it, who’ll stick me in a pigeonhole,” the 44-year-old actor said.

During the last 20 years, Glover has brought to life enough miscreant characters to open up his own Evil Empire. His 1988 lineup alone included the grating Hollywood phony in “Scrooged,” the boozy scheming stepdad in “Masquerade,” the disturbed father who nearly burned his 6-year-old son to death in the wrenching “David” (ABC), and as Brother Leon, the power-hungry bureaucrat in friar’s robes who torments and manipulates his Catholic schoolboy charges in the recent movie “The Chocolate War.”

But the good Glover will once again surface in NBC’s “Twist of Fate” miniseries with Ben Cross and Veronica Hamel Jan. 8 and 9. Filmed on location in Yugoslavia last year, the story has Cross as a Nazi who hides from the advancing Allies by posing as a Jewish prisoner--and goes on to become an Israeli hero. Despite the plot’s curves, Glover plays it straight. He’s a concentration camp prisoner “who remains vulnerable and open, generous and giving, with a sense of humor.”

“My first reaction to the part was, ‘I can’t do it.’ The Holocaust was such a horrific event, I guess I was frightened of the obligations that came with my role,” Glover confessed in an interview.

One of his agents suggested a visit to the Simon Weisenthal Center, “just as a starting point, to get some information.” Meeting a Polish concentration camp survivor there changed the actor’s mind about taking on the project. “He told me incredible things about his life. And I saw the importance of telling the story, in any way, again and again.”

Tall, lean, with a short soft brush of light brown hair, Glover has a soft voice and evinces a gentle manner. If it weren’t for his steady stream of bouncy industry anecdotes, his arch smiles, the occasional glint of mayhem in his eyes, he could easily be taken for something from Mister Rogers’ neighborhood.

Although Glover is used to short bursts of attention from fans-- “After I’ve done something on television, people seem to know who I am for about a week or so”--the public usually manages not to notice him on the street.

His habit of altering his appearance to suit his roles is at least partly to blame. He regularly dyes his brown hair blond, gray or black, perms it, greases it, thins it or shaves it off. To achieve an especially sinister look for “52 Pick-Up,” he wore one blue contact lens and left the other eye its natural hazel.

His latest two film roles constituted an exercise in diversity in themselves--not only in terms of villainy, but surroundings. “Scrooged,” lensing in Los Angeles, and “Chocolate War” rehearsals in Seattle overlapped for a week last year. Glover shuttled back and forth between the movies and was left with an indelible impression of the difference between working on a cushy, big-budget picture and a shoestring production.

“I wore a belt in ‘Scrooged’ that cost more than I got for making ‘Chocolate War,’ ” he revealed with a laugh. “How much? A couple thousand dollars. They made ‘Chocolate War’ for only $700,000, which is kind of amazing. We all rehearsed for free and stayed in Motel 6s, with those tiny shower stalls.”

Glover said he got his inspiration for the California network barracuda he played in “Scrooged” from sports producer Don Ohlmeyer. “As soon as I got the part I went to see him, because he is one of the ultimate TV producers . . . he told me about what he wanted to do and what he had to do to get ahead. . . . He did it ethically, but I concentrated just on the success and drive part of his character and forgot about his ethics.”

With his propensity for rushing quickly from job to job (a trait that accounts for Glover’s involvement in more than one box-office stinker), it seems that he has little time for anything besides work. It’s been that way for years, however, whether traveling the East Coast doing regional theater or playing on Broadway. (He won a Drama Desk award for his role in “The Great God Brown.”)

Two years ago, he decided that “L.A. and I were ready for each other,” packed up his dogs and left Manhattan. Since then, he’s played roles ranging from a supporting part as a valiant AIDS victim in NBC’s “An Early Frost” to the composer felled by a stroke in 1987’s Mark Taper Forum production of “The Traveler.”

As for what he’ll do next . . . Glover said that his agents have attempted to get him to refrain from playing bad guys--at least for a while--in the interest of moving him into leading movie roles.

“They keep telling me, ‘Wait a bit.’ But I don’t want to do that. I keep working so much because I want to keep stretching.”

Besides, he wouldn’t, he said, turn a good villain down. Only days later he signed on for his next sleazy feat. He’ll infect the life of John Lithgow as a tacky boor of a sales manager in “Traveling Man,” an HBO movie set to begin production later this month. Glover reported that his character is “one of those guys who sounds like a Southern evangelist at a sales convention . . . who tapes $5 bills onto the bottoms of chairs as prizes.

“He’s really smarmy,” he added happily.