El Toro Teen Makes a Splash in ‘Lagoon’ : Actor: 19-year-old Brian Krause is likely to set teen hearts aflutter as he co-stars in the sequel to the romantic 1980 movie.

Paradise had its drawbacks for cast and crew of “Return to the Blue Lagoon,” who were rained on daily, bitten by bugs, plagued by sand crabs and sapped by heatstroke while shooting on Fiji’s lush Taveuni Island. The worse part for El Toro-bred Brian Krause was leaving it all behind, however.

“Everything about it was beautiful, magical,” said Krause, a dimpled, nimble 19-year-old who’s likely to make teen hearts beat faster as the romantic saga’s loincloth-clad co-star.

The film, opening today, is a sequel to the 1980 hit “The Blue Lagoon,” which starred Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins.

This time around, Krause plays Richard, son of the couple from the original movie. Coincidentally enough, he finds himself orphaned and stranded on the same tropical island with a new young beauty, Lilli, played by Russian-born model-actress Milla Jovovich. Once again, adolescent love blossoms beneath the palm fronds; this time it’s disrupted by a nasty brush with civilization.

“It’s a coming-of-age film where we learn to deal with the new feelings we have,” Krause said this week by phone from New York, where he had flown to publicize the movie. “Not only sexual feelings, but more like on the emotional level, as far as when you get butterflies when you stand next to a boy or a girl.”

No insect, winged or otherwise, nor the constant threat of falling coconuts or frequent cloudbursts seemed to bother Krause.

Richard “is really innocent and animalistic; all he knows how to do is live off the land,” said the actor. Krause said he got some coaching about living closer to nature from the islanders, who dubbed him “Jungle Boy” or “Main Boy,” for his top billing.

“I learned how to climb coconut trees and husk coconuts and make spears, and they took me out into the bush and taught me what the different plants were, what was good to eat and what was poisonous,” he said.

In fact, a church pastor on the island helped the El Toro High School grad conquer his arachnophobia during last summer’s three-month shoot in the South Pacific. The script called for Krause to handle the leggy creatures, so the older man “showed me these spiders, big ones, with yellow backs,” while explaining the purpose they serve in nature and that “were good for you. It was really cool.”

As for portraying Richard and Lilly’s teen-age, first-time relationship, Krause said that “it just created its own romance.” He fell in love with Jovovich, but said it was on screen only, despite her piercingly clear blue eyes and scenes that push the edge of the film’s PG-13 envelope.

Preparing physically for the film required a little more effort. Before leaving for Fiji, Krause worked out daily with a personal trainer, running and lifting weights and “getting more lean,” to achieve that shipwrecked look, he said. Krause has been physically active much of his life, so it wasn’t much of a hardship, he said.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in El Toro, he plays basketball, baseball, football and tennis, he skis (water and snow), swims, skateboards and motorcycles, and, had he not contracted pneumonia, would have been captain of the soccer team in high school. It was there he started acting, in a drama class that he figured would be “an easy credit.”

The craft quickly became a passion, and in 1987, Krause enrolled in the Actor’s Workshop Laguna, a private school in Laguna Hills, where he stayed for four years. During that time, he also studied physical therapy at Orange Coast College for a year. Then, about three years ago, he got his first TV role--”two lines” on the Michael Landon series “Highway to Heaven”--and has since appeared on other TV series and movies.

After completing “Return to the Blue Lagoon,” he shot “December,” a film due out this winter about five boys preparing to go off to duty in World War II. Now is busy with “Stephen King’s Sleepwalker,” in which he also stars.

“Return to the Blue Lagoon” director William A. Graham, who has mostly made TV movies, described Krause as a “genuinely unaffected” actor, attributing that to his upbringing outside of the industry glitz of Hollywood or New York.

Columbia Pictures’ promotion campaign for the movie clearly emphasizes the couple’s physical attributes, but Krause flatly rejects any suggestion that he’s some sort of hunk.

“I consider myself physically fit” is as far as he would go.

In fact, he said his youthful success has been “a shock,” and he agrees with Graham that his suburban background left him with priorities other than a single-minded yearning for stardom.

Growing up in Orange County, Krause said, “All you know is high school and friends and family. That’s all we really need to know about anyway.”

Practicality has won out, however. Krause, who “wants to work with all the (Hollywood) biggies,” now lives in North Hollywood, hoping in part to preserve what’s left of his Dodge Ram 550.

“I’ve put so many miles traveling from Orange County to L.A. on auditions that I’ve really ruined my truck,” he said.

NEW ‘LAGOON’ REVIEWED: This film is no sequel--it’s really a remake, critic says. F6