On the Streets of ‘Fort Washington’ : The Profile: Once a hot teen idol, then a cold twentysomething star, Matt Dillon hopes to get back on track with the role of a homeless schizophrenic.

Matt Dillon strides into one of his hangouts, E.J.’s Luncheonette on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, dressed mostly in black, including dark sunglasses, with a forbidding look on his face. But when he sits down, stiffly--”basketball and running,” he explains--takes off the glasses and starts to talk, he sounds more eager and bashful than threatening. With circular sentences that stop and start, he sounds more like a Generation X Annie Hall.

He’s aware that often his attempts at conversation with strangers involve more confusion than explanation. A few weeks before, he’d made a rare talk-show appearance on “David Letterman” and he’s still concerned about how he came across.

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“Do you think anyone understood the story I told?” he asks of his rambling anecdote about being confronted by a fan in a restaurant. “I mean, none of the stories that people tell on that show make sense . . . but did mine make any sense? I was so nervous that my palms were sweating onto the chair.”

Dillon subjected himself to such torturous exposure because of two movies he wanted to promote, the romantic comedy “Mr. Wonderful,” which opened last month, and “The Saint of Fort Washington,” opening Wednesday.

In “Fort Washington,” Dillon plays a newly homeless schizophrenic. Danny Glover is a homeless man who takes him under his wing; together they attempt to propel themselves out of the misery of homeless shelters and the streets. Not an easy subject for audiences to warm to, Dillon knows.

As the 29-year-old actor also knows, the same might have been said of him in recent years. He broke into film with great promise, as a handsome 14-year-old tough in “Over the Edge.” After a stretch as a teen idol, culminating in “The Flamingo Kid” in 1984, he spent much of his 20s in movie Siberia, appearing in flop after flop--”The Big Town,” “Kansas,” “Target.”

While audiences were staying away from his films, they were flocking to those of his “Outsiders” co-stars, Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze--ironic, since when the three appeared in that 1983 picture, Dillon was the biggest name.

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His luck seemed to change in 1989 with his wry portrayal of a drug addict in Gus Van Sant’s “Drugstore Cowboy,” a performance that convinced many that he was a serious actor. But his follow-up, a remake of “A Kiss Before Dying,” earned barely a notice. Then came the modest success “Singles” last year and good reviews for his comically self-absorbed rocker. Reviews were strong for “Mr. Wonderful.” If the curve continues upward with “Fort Washington,” Dillon’s career could finally be back on track.

Thinking about the lean years, Dillon starts to squirm. “You can never figure out what’s going to do well,” he says. “But, yeah, yeah, it can bring you down. I always try to do a picture for the right reasons--it’s challenging for me, it’s a good part. You can’t second-guess what audiences are going to think.”

Friends agree he seems less thrown by the currents of Hollywood than other actors seem to be. “Maybe it’s because he’s been in the business a long time,” says Annabella Sciorra, his co-star in “Mr. Wonderful,” “but he really has a good head on his shoulders, he just carries on and does his work.”

Nonetheless, Tim Hunter, who had co-written the script for Dillon’s first film, “Over the Edge,” and directed him in his first starring role, “Tex,” was convinced no one could play the part of “Saint of Fort Washington’s” schizophrenic Matthew besides Dillon.

“If you find the right part for Matt, he has a level of depth and a soulfulness that his contemporaries just don’t have,” says Hunter, who directed the film. ‘He’s a very passionate guy and he puts that into the work. Plus, besides having a lot of talent, he has real decency.”

But Dillon turned down the role when it was first offered. “I was concerned about wanting to go to that dark place in the character, that mental illness,” he says, “because you can’t do it halfway.” Hunter kept after him and eight months later, after doing research with Project Help, visiting the homeless mentally ill, Dillon relented.

The research gave him shadings of his character--but also a sense of relief. “I realize one thing after doing it. . . , “ he says, then pauses, then smiles, “that I am not, you know, certifiable. There have been times I felt like, wow, am I crazy? You’re yelling into the phone, then it dawns on you that you’re yelling like a nut, you know? So I realized that I’m not exactly sane but I’m not truly mad. It is,” he smiles broadly, “reassuring.”

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He admits to being as “neurotic as anyone,” however, and to talking to himself while he walks down the street. The hyperactive energy he tries to control is always with him too. As a result, he finds it tough to wind down, “doesn’t do vacations” and only recently took one (on Martha’s Vineyard) because he had no choice--he’d broken his foot playing basketball two weeks before the end of filming “Fort Washington.” He had the foot taped, finished the film, then went up on an enforced rest.

As frenzied as he may feel, he admits to being calmer than he was a few years ago, when his jumpy behavior with interviewers was invariably part of those stories. As he edges toward his 30th birthday in February, he feels changes occurring but as he tries to describe them, he sounds, again, like Annie Hall.

“Yeah, I definitely feel . . . I’m surprised at how much. . . ,” he starts off. “I do feel like I’m settling down. Not in that retiree way, but I feel like my life is more interesting now. I have more energy, more interests, there are certain worries that I’ve put behind me . . . as you get older . . . I do feel like I’m mellowing out.”

Part of this new stage of his life is, he says, an appreciation of the important things. “I definitely appreciate relationships more,” he explains. (Having kept his private life remarkably private, he will only say that he’s involved with someone.)

Sciorra says she has had animated discussions with him about contemporary artists such as Kenny Scharf and Julian Schnabel, and admits to being impressed by his desire to learn.

Dillon, like most of his fellow actors, wants to direct. He tells of meeting the late Federico Fellini in the late ‘80s while riding a motor scooter through Rome. The director flung his arms around him and invited him to lunch at Cinecitta. In a scene worthy of one of Fellini’s films, they had pasta with tuna in Fellini’s office in that studio, a room bare but for a statue of Jimmy Durante, and Dillon, transfixed, watched the master edit and work with actors.

“Francis (Coppola, who directed him in “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish”) always said actors make the best directors,” Dillon says. In other words, regardless of how his acting career goes, he already has his eye on the next stage.