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His day starts at 2 a.m., after just three hours of slumber (“Anymore than that and I feel groggy”). He’s in the gym by 2:30 a.m., working out each major muscle group with 100 high-speed repetitions. By 3:30 a.m. he’s at home in Bel-Air phoning his offices in New York.

At 7 a.m. he starts making rounds to the homes of such show-business folks as Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford and Aaron Spelling to conduct private fitness training at $200 per half-hour. In the afternoon he tends to his multimillion-dollar fitness organization, which installs workout regimes in health clubs and hotels around the country. His first client, last June, was the Dolphin Hotel at Disney World in Florida.

But wait. Jake Steinfeld, 32, self-proclaimed fitness “Trainer to the Stars,” is just warming up.

Starting Friday at 4:30 p.m. in its regular time slot, the former bodybuilder stars in the new Family Channel sitcom “Big Brother Jake” (also airing Sundays at 3:30 p.m. and Tuesdays at 3:30 and 8 p.m.). The Family Channel ordered 22 episodes of the sitcom, about an L.A. stunt man who moves back to his foster home to become the role model for foster kids.

“You know what? I’m psyched, because I’m the underdog now,” Steinfeld said with a husky Brooklyn accent. “In the fitness business, whatever anybody says, I was the first one to do personal training, to get publicity for it. It was like the pet rock. I landed on something. I’m excited about this show because a lot of people aren’t expecting anything from me.”

“Big Brother Jake” is Steinfeld’s second sitcom. He had a small part in “Shaping Up,” a short-lived 1984 ABC series.

“I just really got off doing that sitcom,” Steinfeld said, a bundle of energy and smiles, closer in spirit to a big kid than an iron-willed bodybuilder.

“That instantaneous laughter you got when you said something funny. It was like a high, it really was,” he said. “It was something I’d never experienced.” Steinfeld had his idea for “Big Brother Jake” in development at MCA and Weintraub Entertainment. “They introduced me to a lot of writer-and-producer teams,” he said. “But they would say, ‘Jake! That’s a great idea you have. But what about if you’re a personal trainer, right? And we put it in a gym?’ Basically, everybody was just trying to mold me and sell me the way everyone perceives me, which I understand.”

Steinfeld has been doing bit parts in feature films. With the help of his powerful contacts he’s appeared in big films (“Coming to America,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”) and small ones (“Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie”). But he was always the bridesmaid. After all, he wasn’t the first muscleman turned actor.

“I don’t have an agent or a manager. I do my own deals,” he explained. “Any time a script would come my way it would be a small-budget, mini-’Terminator’-type role.”

So Steinfeld held out with his idea for a TV show about a big brother in a foster home until the Family Channel -which is expanding this season into comedy with “Big Brother Jake” and another sitcom, “Maniac Mansion”--decided to take a chance on him.

“I’m a perfect example of a regular guy just having a dream,” Steinfeld said. About 12 years ago, when Steinfeld moved to Santa Monica shortly after taking up bodybuilding, his dream was to become Mr. America.

“I never planned on any of this, man,” he said, sitting back and exhaling a deep breath. “I was like everybody else when I came out here. I got on that tour bus on Rodeo Drive, my face plastered up against the window, going, ‘Man, look at the size of these houses. What makes these people different from me? How come I live in an apartment in Bagoonyaville?”U

After two years on the Muscle Beach scene, Steinfeld decided steroids and skin cancer weren’t for him. So he took a job at a health club and later as the Incredible Hulk for the Universal Studios Tours. In 1980, when Keith Carradine’s wife, actress Sandy Will, asked Steinfeld to help her get in shape for a TV commercial, a star trainer was born.

“When I was in Brooklyn, and I watched TV or saw movie stars, I thought these guys were 9-foot-3 inches tall,” Steinfeld said. “What I found out was that they’re just like us. They had a dream, though. They had a dream and they saw it through.”

Steinfeld made headlines for his fashionable and fast-lane profession, entering the private domains of celebrities such as Teri Garr, Morgan Fairchild, Priscilla Presley, Melissa Manchester and shaping their bodies.

But instead of succumbing to the fad, Steinfeld had the smarts to turn the trend into an institution. In 1985 he began doing five-minute fitness breaks on CNN and in 1987 launched a syndicated workout show. In January, Steinfeld begins shooting 65 episodes of “Body By Jake,” a new workout show for ESPN that evolved from his syndicated show. And his company maintains a list of more than 100 clients on both coasts.

And Steinfeld’s new San Diego-based licensing company is negotiating deals with several corporations to produce products ranging from Body By Jake Inc. apparel to skin-care and hair-care products. “We’re hoping that Body By Jake will be the lifestyle license of the ‘90s, in the way that Vidal Sassoon was in the ‘70s and ‘80s.”