This Is ‘Like Water’ for Real : Movies: Those love scenes were more than acting in hit Mexican film. The two stars found romance and now share a small flat in Hollywood.

Audiences adored Alfonso Arau’s luscious 1992 “Like Water for Chocolate” and its heady mix of star-crossed lovers, Mexican Revolution and sensual celebration of food.

But even though it grossed an amazing $22 million in the United States alone and became the highest-grossing independently produced foreign film of all time, there isn’t likely to be a “Like Water 2” any time soon. And that’s because its stars, Lumi Cavazos and Marco Leonardi, are busy living a real-life love story as compelling as anything they created on screen.

In fact, the couple, who met and fell in love in 1991 on the set of “Like Water,” have left their native Mexico and Italy, respectively, and now live together in a sparse Hollywood apartment with Ben-Hur, their docile pit bulldog, and, appropriately, two lovebirds.

“We like it here for now,” Cavazos says, standing on the small balcony crowded by a bird cage and dog house.

“I came here because I wanted to be with Marco and he wanted to be with me,” she continues, walking back inside the apartment. “I’ve been to Marco’s home in Italy and he’s been to mine in Mexico. However, we’d both prefer to try our luck here, now that our film is still fresh in people’s minds.”

“One day, we were friends, and the next, we were in love,” says Leonardi, 22.

“Our romance didn’t affect our performance in the film,” adds Cavazos, 25, “but the chemistry between us made our love scenes much better.”

In Cavazos and Leonardi’s real-life sequel, a few things have changed. For one thing, they have plunged into an intensive study of English. “In order to get roles and see agents, we have to know the language,” Cavazos says.

When they met on the set of their film, Leonardi says, he spoke only Italian and she only Spanish. On a recent night out on Melrose Avenue, the couple ordered a meal in Italian, spoke to fans on the street in English and posed for pictures with Spanish-speaking tourists. At home, they generally speak Spanish.

And there’s another difference since “Like Water for Chocolate”: He does the cooking.

“I never learned to cook as well as Marcos does,” Cavazos says as Leonardi prepares a pasta dish for lunch. “It’s never been my passion. My mom was right in telling me that I wouldn’t learn cooking in the theater.”

The Monterrey-born actress hadn’t read Laura Esquivel’s best-selling novel when she first interviewed for the role of Tita. “Afterward, I ran to a bookstore to get the novel,” she says, “and read it several times to imbue myself in the character. I realized how much Tita was like me, coming from a conservative family and all.”

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Leonardi shares his recipe for pasta carbonara with a guest and apologizes for the domestic wine. Then he makes a long-distance call to Italy to ask his mother in Rome for soccer scores. “I call every week. Football is another passion in my life.”

As a teen-ager, Leonardi had a chance to become a professional soccer player, but a starring part in “La Esposa es Bellissima” with Angela Molina and Stefania Sandrelli changed his life. His film credits also include Guiseppe Tornatore’s “Cinema Paradiso,” winner of the 1989 Oscar for best foreign film.

“Unlike Lumi’s, my parents urged me to get into film,” he says. “My father, who is a journalist, also worked as an movie extra. He got me into TV commercials when I was a kid. I was the youngest (of four siblings), but I never figured out why he never pushed me into show biz.”

For Arau, Leonardi was heaven-sent.

“I think Marco is an amulet, a lucky charm,” Arau says. “The leading man (in ‘Like Water’) had to be very handsome. That’s why Tita is so in love with him. The Mexican actors I planned to use were unavailable. That worried me until I went to see ‘Cinema Paradiso’ and saw Marco.”

Cavazos recently signed with ICM in hopes of pursuing mainstream Hollywood features as well as global opportunities. Peter Rawley, head of the international department at ICM, sees a bright future for them.

“Both are brilliant actors,” Rawley says. “Lots of overseas actors are coming here, testing and working on language skills. Speaking perfect English doesn’t mean you immediately get work--it just puts you in a tougher category, competing with American actors.”

Cavazos recently learned this firsthand when she auditioned for “A Walk in the Clouds,” Arau’s first English-language film, which stars Keanu Reeves. Her English was deemed adequate, but studio executives at the film’s studio, Fox, weren’t convinced of her chemistry with Reeves. Arau, however, says he hopes to work with her again.

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Meanwhile, she hasn’t been idle. She just finished “Tres Destinos,” a Spanish telenovela, in Puerto Rico. While there, she also agreed to star in Joseph B. Vasquez’s “Rice, Beans and Ketchup,” a film about two Dominican immigrants searching for the American Dream. “She asked if her boyfriend could be in the film,” says Vasquez, who also directed “The Bronx War.” “We said yes and wrote a part for him as the Italian friend of the lead.”

Later this month, Cavazos travels to Texas to begin filming a James L. Brooks-produced movie, “Bottle Rocket,” a Columbia Pictures release revolving around three men; she plays the Cuban maid of one of them. (“Surprisingly, I don’t have to speak that much English,” she says). Leonardi has had preliminary discussions with an American producer about a film in which he would star as a young Italian visiting New York.

The couple will go back to Mexico next month to film “Viva San Isidro!,” an Italian movie starring Leonardi. “The film is a fable with comedy,” he says, in which he portrays--appropriately--a soccer player; Cavazos is his love interest. “The characters will speak Spanish, but they will be dubbed into Italian later. Lumi will get a chance to show how good her Italian is.”

Later, they walk to a nearby Hollywood park for Ben-Hur’s daily romp. At a bus stop, Leonardi spots what he thought was a poster for the home video release of “Like Water.” Instead, it advertises “Love Affair,” starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, another on-screen/off-screen couple.

Both stare at the older lovers in a pose similar to their own on the “Like Water” poster. “It looks like an American remake of ‘Like Water,’ 20 years later,” she says.

That evening, they watch a dubbed English-language video of “Like Water,” marveling at English coming out of their mouths. Leonardi says he might take the tape to his language instructor and say: “I speak perfect English. Take a look.”

Cavazos, seriously, says that the English version makes her realize that language is secondary to a good performance. Ben-Hur howls in agreement. “I don’t think they dubbed the dog in the English version of ‘Like Water,’ do you?” she asks Leonardi.

“Of course they did, my love,” he says. “They had the dog say, ‘Bow-wow’ instead of ‘Guau-guau’ in Spanish. Great lip sync, wasn’t it?”