“At the age of seven,” says Irish-born...

“At the age of seven,” says Irish-born actor Patrick Bergin, “I assumed another personality. I changed my name to Ben McGuire. I’ve been acting ever since!”

Bergin is appearing as Capt. Richard Burton, the 19th-Century explorer and adventurer, in Tri-Star’s film “Mountains of the Moon.”

“McGuire was very charming,” says Bergin, “Whereas Patrick Bergin was quite austere and severe.”

Impossible.

Bergin, 6-foot-3, has worked on stage in England, and he’s done some film and TV work, but the Burton role is his first major part.

Burton wrote volumes about his forays into Africa in search of the source of the Nile, which the film re-creates. But it was in another capacity that the actor first encountered Burton’s work--as the translator of an edition of the Kama Sutra.

“The first time I read Burton,” says the actor, “I was 12 or 13. I read the Kama Sutra. My father had it on his bookshelf. I think he used to practice it on my mum.”

Bergin grew up in Dublin, where his father was a member of Ireland’s Senate. At 17, Bergin left Ireland and wandered throughout Europe. He ended up in London, where he worked in fringe theater and started an alternative school for troubled children. Bergin worked in a library and remained there nights studying.

Bergin’s immediate destiny is to play Julia Roberts’ husband in “Sleeping with the Enemy.” The Fox project is due to shoot in North Carolina in April.

Will playing an American be tough for Bergin? Isn’t there something essentially Irish about Bergin and Burton and Ben McGuire?

“Yeah,” sighs Bergin, “There is such a thing as the Irish soul. It’s haunted and disturbed and fleeing. It’s always on the run. They’re little demons that prod the world into humor.”