The Confessions of Singer Miguel Bose : Pop music: Once a sex symbol among Spain’s teen-agers, the 37-year-old singer-actor offers mature musical emotions for his L.A. concert debut.

In his role as a transvestite prosecutor in director Pedro Almodovar’s movie “High Heels,” Miguel Bose says, “I can be the man you want me to be.”

In real life, the Spanish singer-actor has struggled to establish whom he wants to be.

After 12 albums and 35 film appearances over a 21-year career, the teen sex-symbol image of his early fame lingers, while he works to be taken seriously as an artist expressing deeper emotions.

“The sex-symbol part never bothered me, but believe me, the 17-year-old Miguel Bose is long gone,” said Bose, now 37, during a recent phone interview from Mexico City.

Bose will make his Los Angeles concert debut on Thursday at the Universal Amphitheatre, then perform at the San Diego Sports Arena on Friday.

Maturity is clear in his latest album, the ambitious “Bajo el signo de Cain” (“Under the Sign of Cain”). The collection, produced by Ross Collum (Enya, Howard Jones) includes songs with direct lyrics dealing with the environment, spirituality, exile and unfulfilled love.

There is also a tongue-in-cheek song commenting on the wild stories about his personal life that have circulated in the Spanish press in recent years, including three reports that he had died--one claiming his demise was the result of a motorcycle accident, a second saying he’d gone over a cliff in his car and a third that he’d succumbed to AIDS.

“It was a demented, cheap, gratuitous attack from a small sector” of the press, said Bose, the son of renowned actress Lucia Bose and legendary bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin.

The rumors spread quickly in Spain, and ultimately spurred him to address his image through his music, with the new album ranking as his most confessional and personal.

“This is the most accurate self-portrait I’ve ever done,” said Bose, whose first musical influences were the records his father would bring home from bullfighting seasons in Latin America.

“It was dozens of vinyl records of salsa, vallenatos , cumbias and boleros,” Bose said. “Just the ritual of looking at the suitcase was enough for me to get goosebumps.”

After spending two years as a student in England in the mid-1970s, he added the Beatles, Roxy Music, Genesis and David Bowie to his favorites. Today Bose’s music is an uncommercial blend of American pop, Latin rhythms and flamenco grooves stressing mood more than melody, with a rich instrumentation that includes Indian violin, Irish bagpipe, mandolin and flamenco guitar and percussion--not exactly what you’d expect from a former teen idol.

“I want to do what I want to do, not what people expect me to do,” said Bose, who in July will make his debut as a playwright and stage director at a theater festival in Merida, Spain, where his “La espera” (“The Wait”)--a dramatic play based on discourses by Spanish theater heroines in times of war--will be presented.

After “High Heels,” Bose starred with Isabelle Adjani in “La Nuit Sacree.” In “Mazeppa” he played a young 19th-Century artist obsessed with horses. Although he plans to continue acting in films, his main interests remain music and writing.

“After each movie I always end up desperate to write and record new material right away,” he said. “I’m in a perfect age for things to come, and I proved to be very good at survival.”