That’s M-I-R-A-N-D-A : With ‘Enchanted April,’ ‘The Crying Game’ and ‘Damage,’ English actress Miranda Richardson has become a name to reckon with

For the second time in her career, there’s plenty of heat surrounding the name of English actress Miranda Richardson. Six years ago, in the wake of her remarkable performance in the film “Dance With a Stranger,” Hollywood beckoned, but Richardson virtually ignored the call.

But within the space of a few months, Richardson’s appearances in three films have reminded moviegoers that “Dance With a Stranger” wasn’t a fluke.

She has already received favorable notices for her role as the God-fearing Rose in “Enchanted April,” Mike Newell’s wry comedy of manners about four Englishwomen vacationing in Italy in the 1920s. The film has been a surprise hit on the art-house circuit in the United States, grossing more than $10 million after 15 weeks.

The advance word is also good about her performance in Louis Malle’s new film, “Damage,” which opens in New York and Los Angeles Dec. 16. Playing older than her 31 years, she portrays the conventional wife of an English politician embroiled in an affair with his son’s fiancee. In the film’s most chilling scene, Richardson falls apart with grief after learning of her son’s death.

Beginning Wednesday, Richardson can be seen in Irish director Neil Jordan’s new film, “The Crying Game.” As Jude, the lover of the film’s central character Fergus (Stephen Rea), she changes identities with bewildering speed. First we see her as a fairground flirt in a denim mini-skirt, using her allure to trap a young British soldier into an Irish Republican Army kidnaping plot. Then Jude is seen as a ruthless IRA terrorist. Finally she dons an auburn wig and chic, tailored clothes to go undercover in London as what one can only call a femme fatale .

“I like Neil’s style,” said Richardson, swathed in a shawl and chewing on a raw carrot as she relaxed between exterior night scenes of her latest work, a BBC television film called “Century.” “It’s heightened, and a little theatrical. The only reservation I had about taking the role was not being Irish. Film is much more specific than theater and your accent has to be spot-on. But it’s a great role. I had the chance to be three different people.”

Considerations like this have guided Richardson through her 12-year career as an actress, which before these three recent films had consisted mainly of stage work and films for British TV.

“What I basically like is doing things I haven’t done before,” she noted. “If I’m ever asked what I want from film work, I always say I would like to achieve the versatility I can find in the theater, and having the same variety. It’s easier to get typecast in cinema.

“That’s why I did ‘Damage.’ Partly because it was Louis, but also, in view of the fact my character was older, because he was taking a risk with me. I thought I would like to take a risk too.”

She is delighted at the American success of “Enchanted April,” and bristled at a suggestion that it was successfully marketed as being like a Merchant Ivory film. “It may have been marketed that way,” she said, “but it was much better directed.

“It’s encouraging that people want character, story and to be able to chart characters’ progress. I’m glad people have been prepared to go in to the film and listen and be drawn into the story. Someone told me they had seen ‘Enchanted April’ on a plane, and after it was over everyone on board seemed to behave much more nicely toward each other. That’s something, isn’t it?”

Richardson does not accept that her career is on a roll just because of “Enchanted April,” “The Crying Game” and “Damage.” “That’s just perception, really, isn’t it?” she said. “It has a lot to do with the proximity of the films coming out in a short space of time.”

Still, she accepts that the three roles constitute an impressive calling card, and taken together demonstrate her skill and range. There is again interest in her working in America, and she’s considering it seriously. “This time round,” she says, “I’m coming from a position of strength.

“In America, though, that range might even work against me,” she said. “People might say, well, she does that and she can do that, but could she sustain this? Meaning another different role. It’s comforting for people to say, oh, she does this one thing. This is what she does.”

Even so, Richardson is likely to emerge from her current streak with better offers than she did six years ago. She made a big impact in “Dance With a Stranger” (also directed by Newell) as Ruth Ellis, a small-time nightclub hostess who after killing her lover became in 1955 the last woman in Britain to be executed. For the role, Richardson changed masks again, becoming a platinum blonde with bright red lips, a slightly tawdry British version of a Hollywood sex goddess in the style of Marilyn Monroe.

“Oh, the scripts I got (from Hollywood) after ‘Dance With a Stranger,’ ” said Richardson, shaking her head in mock desperation. “Hellcat roles. Female RoboCop roles. Or I’d be asked to be the kind of woman who would break out and knife somebody.”

She was also sent the script for “Fatal Attraction,” with a view to gauging her interest in playing the Other Woman--who was eventually portrayed by Glenn Close.

But as Richardson tells it, she removed herself from contention. “I don’t remember whether there was a firm offer or not,” she said. “You’d think I would remember, as the film became such a success. But I don’t. I do know that I loathed the script, and the final product. It was so regressive in its attitudes. Not just in that role, but the wife’s role, too. Anyhow, I don’t just want to be known as someone who plays characters that stick scissors into people.”

As it was, she decided Holly wood had little to offer her. She took a supporting role in Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun,” then went back to working in London theater. It was a courageous decision for a hitherto unknown actress of 25.

Richardson grew up in a quiet seaside resort called Southport, close to Liverpool on England’s northwest coast. She went to drama school in Bristol, where she was a contemporary of Daniel Day-Lewis. She then sharpened her craft in British provincial theaters “Dance With a Stranger” propelled her to prominence.

Though she is now one of the better-known English acting names of her generation, she has assumed few of stardom’s accouterments. She lives quietly in a modest London flat with her two cats, and has few extravagances. “Money hasn’t really mattered to me,” she said. “It’s nice to have, but I’ve never worried about it. It only wears you down if you are not making a great deal of money and you are not given the time to do the projects you are working on properly. That’s a combination which just makes you want to stay at home.”

Richardson’s concern for her privacy has led her to be described as haughty and difficult with the press, though on this occasion, she was talkative and amiable. “It’s not to create an air of mystery,” she said. “But I’m very keen on ‘The Crying Game,’ and I want to do what I can for it. I also feel better equipped to deal with the trappings of this business at the moment than I sometimes do.” In her current film, “Century,” Richardson says she plays a woman “who’s a free spirit, working as a laboratory assistant in a research institute at the turn of the century. She gets involved with a young, brilliant doctor who is (hired by) the institute.”

So why had she opted to do this role? “It meant I could play a romantic lead, which was not something I had ever done before on film. Rather, I’ve played people who have romance in them, or,” and here she looked slyly sideways, “had romance taken away from them. So it was new.

“In the same way, I’ve never played someone very glamorous. As an actress in Britain, you’re really not allowed to be attractive. Glamour obviously sells, but in Britain it seems to imply a lack of integrity, that you’re trading purely on cosmetic, superficial values. Glamour and attention to that sort of detail is seen as an American preoccupation.”

She also bemoans a tendency in British theater circles to denigrate actors who go off and make films. “It’s as though once you do a movie, suddenly you’ve never done theater in your life. You’re not part of the theater Establishment. It’s all sour grapes, really.”

Still, she has managed to rise above it. If time permits next year, she hopes to star in “Oleanna,” the David Mamet play about sexual harassment that recently opened in New York, at London’s Royal Court Theatre. John Malkovich is a possible co-star.

This largely depends on whether Hollywood comes through with any offers that interest her. She admits to being cautious. “It’s much more difficult to know what the end product is going to be like with American films. In Britain, you get a script, and that’s what gets shot. In America, a script can get rewritten and rewritten. Writers have no power at all.”

In the end, she thinks, she will receive a script she likes and take a chance, even if she isn’t familiar with the director: “As far as America’s concerned, I’m reassessing. It’s certainly less of a blanket ‘no’ than it was a few years ago.”