Columbus’ New Adventure : Chris Columbus took on the task of directing Robin Williams as a 60-something woman. Smart move? Well, at least the star is grown-up (kind of)

Chris Columbus is the Rodney Dangerfield of directors. Despite having made “Home Alone” (now the fourth-highest-grossing movie ever) and its sequel, “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” he just can’t seem to get much respect.

To start with, there’s that name, which even he says is funny. “If it were Vittorio Colombo or something, people might not think twice about it,” he reflects, “but you see ‘Chris Columbus’ up there and it just makes you smile.”

And there are his looks, which are deceivingly boyish for a 35-year-old. As Robin Williams, the star of Columbus’ latest film, “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which opens Nov. 24, puts it: “When he smokes a cigar, he looks like Baby LeRoy. You want to say, ‘Put that cigar out, son, it’ll stunt your growth!’ ”

But the main reason for Columbus’ relative anonymity is that up to now he has been overshadowed by the illustrious company he keeps.

Although he has several other films under his directorial belt (“Only the Lonely,” “Adventures in Babysitting” and “Heartbreak Hotel”), he is best known for working with Steven Spielberg, for whom he wrote “Gremlins,” “The Goonies” and “Young Sherlock Holmes,” and with John Hughes, the popular bard of the ‘burbs (“Sixteen Candles,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Uncle Buck”), who wrote “Home Alone” and hired Columbus to direct. In their reflected glow, Columbus became “the next Spielberg” and “the next Hughes” almost before anyone had a chance to wonder who he was.

Not that Columbus can be accused of keeping a high profile in Hollywood. He lives in Chicago and New York and has for the most part avoided the industry since spending a year in Los Angeles in the early ‘80s shortly after graduating from film school at New York University. He says he missed the seasons and drove two blocks to the grocery store even though he prefers to walk, because in Los Angeles, “you just get into that mind-set.”

But the biggest difficulty was on an inspirational level.

“I felt that I was around the business so much and friends of mine, other filmmakers, were so into not only making that big deal, but also trying to write something that was commercial, and I never thought about that. I still don’t,” he says. “I write what’s from the heart, whether it’s commercial or not, and I was losing that sense in L.A.”

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Columbus has been in San Francisco, where “Mrs. Doubtfire” was filmed, for most of the past year. It ranks high on his inspirational scale, in part because it is home to what the director says is one of the great radio stations in the country, the eclectic rock station KFOG, which he listens to on earphones during his daily run.

Pushing aside a Tower Records bag brimming with new CDs, an overstuffed briefcase and a pair of athletic shoes to make room in his office inside the “Doubtfire” production facilities in North Beach, Columbus is full of apologies: “My office is such a mess--there’s even some old laundry, I’m afraid. . . . It smells like smoke in here from my cigars; I hope you don’t mind.”

He seems as plain as the chinos and flannel shirt he’s wearing. His former screenwriting teacher at NYU, Jesse Kornbluth, a writer who is currently adapting his book about Michael Milken, “Highly Confident,” into a screenplay and has stayed in touch with Columbus over the years, confirms that this is not a false facade.

“There’s nothing imposing about Chris; he’s not an authority figure,” Kornbluth says. “Chris is someone for whom you do it because you love them, not because you fear them.” He remembers his student as a natural, not only because of his writing skills, but because of his accessibility.

Those same qualities attracted Williams and his wife, Marsha Garces Williams, who is one of the “Doubtfire” producers, to Columbus. After their initial meeting, the director’s revision of Randi Mayem Singer and Leslie Dixon’s script to incorporate some ideas that the Williamses felt strongly about won him the project.

“It was the fact that he rewrote it and made it work and finally fixed the traps. I didn’t do it because I said, ‘Oh, God, he made $300 million,’ ” Robin Williams says.

“And he’s not broody on the set like many directors are,” says Marsha Williams.

“Mrs. Doubtfire,” based on an English children’s book, is about a San Francisco couple, Daniel and Miranda Hillard, who are getting a divorce. When interior designer Miranda (played by Sally Field) is awarded custody of their three children, Daniel (Williams), an out-of-work actor, decides to circumvent the ruling allowing him to visit the kids for only a few hours each week. He disguises himself as the perfect English nanny, Mrs. Doubtfire, who is hired by the unwitting Miranda to look after the children.

Despite its high concept--Robin Williams in drag--the movie deals with divorce in a realistic way. The parents don’t get back together, and that is not treated like the end of the world.

Other situations are realistic too: Daniel has a gay brother (Harvey Fierstein), Chinese neighbors and trouble finding and keeping a job. Miranda is no longer the career-at-all-costs shrew she was in the first screenplay, and her new boyfriend (Pierce Brosnan) is a nice guy--not a villain, as previously written.

The most important aspect of the story, for both the Williamses and the director, was making sure the parents do not reconcile.

“In 98% of these situations the parents don’t get back together,” Columbus says. “The problem with kids is that they always hope and believe that their parents are going to get back together, and as a result, they’re left with this sense of false hope.

“I wanted to make sure that when kids saw this movie, they’d realize that their parents weren’t going to get back together but it was going to be OK in some sense. Great people and great families can come from homes that don’t necessarily have a mother or a father in them all the time.”

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While it is difficult to put a stamp on Columbus’ work, family has been a theme throughout his recent movies.

From the boy who lost his family in the “Home Alone” pictures, to the man who is afraid to break away from his mother in “Only the Lonely,” Columbus acknowledges that it is an important motif: “There’s a scene in ‘The Godfather, Part II’ where Michael Corleone says to his mother, ‘Can a man lose his family?’ and she tells him a man can never lose his family. I was always fascinated with that.”

“It can obviously fit into any genre--because we’re talking about ‘Home Alone’ and ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ and ‘The Godfather, Part II.’ ”

His own family--4-year-old Eleanor, 16-month-old Brandon and wife Monica, a choreographer who is expecting their third child--were all frequent visitors on the “Doubtfire” set. And Columbus talks easily about his parents and his childhood in industrial Warren, Ohio. His father was a coal miner in Pennsylvania when Chris, an only child, was born. But the family soon moved to Ohio, where both parents worked in factories. His mother, Irene, is very religious.

“She is constantly lighting candles and saying novenas for everything that happens in my life,” he says, amused. “Whether it’s the new baby or the film opening or my kids getting over a cold, she’s a big believer. And it really does seem to work.”

Warren was worlds away from Hollywood, but when 15-year-old Chris came home after seeing “The Godfather” and announced his intention to make movies, his parents were supportive and struggled to send him to NYU.

After selling his first screenplay, which was never made, during his sophomore year, Columbus took over the tuition payments and has never looked back. Part of his ambition, he acknowledges, is based on “being terrified of going back to Ohio and having to work in a factory. I worked in my father’s aluminum plant for two years. I know what it’s like to get up every day at 5 o’clock and say, ‘God, I hate going to work.’ ”

“Gremlins,” his fourth screenplay, was rejected by about 50 directors and producers, he says, before Spielberg took an interest in it. After Spielberg optioned it, Columbus spent a year in Los Angeles working at Amblin Productions.

“I had an office just down the hall from Steven, so when I was writing we’d go over the pages and talk about the characters. For some reason, I had carte blanche to interrupt him. It was an invaluable experience for me, like a graduate class in filmmaking.” Their relationship continued until “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” when Columbus was fired.

“The mistake I made was that Steven asked me to do ‘Indiana Jones’ and I was scheduled to go into meetings with Steven and George Lucas. Just the three of us in a room. Now if you want to talk about intimidating. . . . So I went into this room for about eight days in New York and I just took notes on every aspect of the story.” Columbus was so awed at working with the two screen legends that he transcribed the notes almost word for word, adding nothing of himself--which resulted in what he calls a “very flat screenplay.”

“They tossed me off the project, but I understood,” he continues. “I learned a very valuable lesson, which is that if you’re going to do something, you always have to do it from your own inspiration, even if you’re rewriting someone else’s work.” He has remained close to Spielberg and says, “I still make my films hoping to please Steven.”

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Columbus also admires Hughes, with whom he shares an obsession for music.

“I used to think I had a great record collection,” Columbus says, “but John’s just blew me away. He had closets that were supposed to be clothes closets and he’d open them and it looked like a radio station. They were just filled with old records. John writes listening to music, and I do too.” (The alternately riotous and sensitive “Mrs. Doubtfire” was, he says, influenced by Pearl Jam and the soundtrack from “Les Miserables.”)

Like Hughes, Columbus has developed a reputation for working well with young actors. But, he says, well-directed children--whether Macaulay Culkin or the three young co-stars of “Mrs. Doubtfire,” Lisa Jakub, Matthew Lawrence and Mara Wilson--are usually “real” kids.

“You can see in these kids’ eyes where their honesty almost outweighs their acting talent,” he says. “I think that’s why so many people across the country related to Macaulay, because he was a real kid, not this polished, Hollywood version of a kid.”

Matthew Lawrence, now 13, says Columbus “is just a really cool guy.”

Peter Chernin, the chairman of 20th Century Fox, which has produced most of Hughes’ and Columbus’ movies, has noticed few similarities between the directors.

“Chris is first and foremost a director, and John is first and foremost a writer,” Chernin says. “Not to say John isn’t a very talented director, and I think Chris is a very talented writer. But other than they worked on the most successful comedy of all time together, I don’t see them as being comparable.”

Columbus tends to agree. While it is flattering to be compared to such popular giants as Spielberg and Hughes, he says, “you like to carve out a niche for yourself.”

“I certainly don’t know what’s going to happen in the end, but I’d like to continually surprise people, at least let people say, ‘I didn’t expect him to do that kind of movie.’ ”

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Those who dismissed Columbus as a “cartoon” director after his “Home Alone” outings may be surprised at the nuances he has given “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

The film marks a significant step in Columbus’ evolution as a director of more serious material, according to those who know him.

“He’s clearly established himself as as good a comedy director as there is out there,” Chernin says. “But this movie has a much deeper emotional content than his previous movies. This is a movie that one minute you’ll be laughing hysterically, and then, in the next, you’re genuinely very moved and saddened.”

Columbus’ forte, says Tom Jacobson, Fox president of worldwide production, is taking a concept and finding the emotional underpinnings that will make it come to life.

“So it’s not just about Robin Williams dressing up as a woman and doing the funny things that you would expect; it’s about why,” says Jacobson, who worked with the director on the “Home Alone” pictures as well as “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

In his understated way, the director attributes most of the credit for “Mrs. Doubtfire” to its multifaceted star.

Williams, Columbus says, “is incredibly funny, and also he’s one of the few actors who always managed to touch me very deeply.”

“It’s been this intense desire to work with him ever since I saw ‘Good Morning, Vietnam,’ ” he says. “Just hearing ‘Robin Williams’ and the idea for the movie, I thought it’s definitely the one I should do next, because people sort of have this perception of me, which is not unfounded, that I do these movies for children. But I’ve always really wanted to work with actors, and if I could be remembered for anything, I’d like to be remembered as an actor’s director.

“I have this dream of spending like six months running every day with Marlon Brando, getting him down to that ‘Last Tango in Paris’ fighting shape and doing a movie with him,” he continues, somewhat sheepishly.

Certainly, the influences he cites--which range from directors like John Ford, David Lean and Martin Scorsese to actors like Brando, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro--are not what you might expect from the director of “Home Alone.”

“The truth is,” Robin Williams says, “he’s seen many, many more movies than I ever have. He knows. He’s like Steven in that respect. They are both cinephiles, and that allows them to work in it well.”

While it would be natural for Columbus to have some anxiety about having to live up to the enormous success of “Home Alone” in future films, that doesn’t seem to bother him.

“I don’t feel any pressure to compete with myself in any box-office sense,” he says. “I just want to strive to make better and better films, and whether they make $2 million or $500 million is really not an issue with me. The most gratifying thing about the business is that you can see what sort of effect your film will have on an audience. When it’s a comedy and you hear people just laughing hysterically and you can’t hear the dialogue on screen--there’s really not another high like that for me.”

Columbus is just as casual about his future as he is about everything else. He knows he’ll soon go back to his home in Chicago, where he can lead the invisible life he enjoys. The leaves will turn red; Eleanor will go to nursery school.

He has already vetoed directing a third “Home Alone.” He recently signed a deal with MGM’s Frank Mancuso to write and produce a new version of “Theatre of Blood,” based on the campy 1973 gore-fest that starred Vincent Price as an absolutely awful Shakespearean actor who exacts revenge on the critics who tormented him with bad reviews.

If the deal, which was signed on the day Price died, sounds out of the ordinary for Columbus, think again.

“This is something I’ve always wanted to write,” he says. “I’ve felt that it was a terrific idea for a great black comedy and an opportunity to sort of do away with critics in a comedic fashion.”

Though Columbus is now writing the screenplay, he emphasizes that it is still essentially a development deal. Which leaves up in the air the question of which movie he will direct next.

“There are a couple of things I won’t do--you won’t find me making a ‘9 1/2 Weeks,’ ” he says, smiling at the very idea. “I would start laughing if I was doing it. Movies like ‘Basic Instinct’--I can understand the validity of showing people the ugliness of the world, but I also think there is a place for movies to leave people with a sense of hope for life. If your film isn’t going to do that, then I just don’t think it’s worth making.

“I don’t have a set goal for 20 years down the road. There are two moments that I’ve had in working: when I got the ‘Home Alone’ script and knew that I had to do it, and when I heard the idea for ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ and I was so inspired. Now I know that I have to trust that instinct. If it happens tomorrow or if it happens two years from now, I’m going to wait until I find it again.”