An Actor Who’s Happy When Laugh’s on Him : Movies: Daniel Stern--the ‘Bushwhacked’ star who has made a name for himself with slapstick comedy--may be the only person who doesn’t take himself seriously.

Daniel Stern is to be found quick-stepping at a high school gymnasium in Santa Monica, in training for his role as a basketball coach in the upcoming movie “Celtic Pride.”

“It’s better when it’s hurtin,’ ” screams the instructor. At 37, 6-foot-2 and all limbs, Stern has the air of a varsity player about him--if not the lung capacity. He makes it through the back-forth-sideways routine, but needs a long moment to catch his breath, sloping his head and shoulders into a human question mark. He’s better at playing defense. After ably spotting someone about half his age, he crashes comically into a gym door--ever the goofball. But then, the hapless pratfall has lately become his stock in trade.

Whether futilely trying to negotiate a horse in the “City Slickers” movies or being the object of Macaulay Culkin’s increasingly sadistic trickery in the “Home Alone” films, Stern has withstood enough corporal abuse to put the rest of us in permanent traction. This week an entire troupe of would-be-Culkins puts him through his paces on the Scout trip from hell in the family comedy “Bushwhacked.”

As he towels off after practice, Stern confesses that, despite his height, he never played basketball in high school. “I was the longhair, who wasn’t allowed to play on the team. I’ve never been coached before and I don’t think I like it. I’m just doing this so I don’t make a complete fool of myself in the film,” he says, flashing that you-never-know-if-he’s-kidding grin. Besides, he says, he never had the killer instinct to be a good ballplayer.

When it comes to acting, he’s a bit more competitive, although it’s always leavened by humor. “I don’t know if other people think I’m funny, but I get into moods when I compulsively make jokes.”

Before graduating to slapstick, Stern had cornered the market on a smarter, more self-deprecating kind of guy, starting with “Breaking Away” in 1979. He was the nerdy young man who used sarcasm to define his turf among a group of peers. Nowhere was this combination of braininess and immaturity more succinctly realized than in Barry Levinson’s now-classic “Diner.”

Stern was suffused with comic rage in a painfully funny scene where he chastises his young wife for misfiling his record albums. It’s an almost textbook example of the difference between men and women. And even today, Stern says there’s not a thing about the scene he would change. “It was all there in ‘Diner,’ ” he says with a slight nod for emphasis.

Physical comedy emerged just as the overgrown boy routine was beginning to get a little tattered around the edges. “Home Alone” opened a door to play “the dumb innocent,” and Stern plummeted forward. It’s rare these days outside of Blake Edwards movies to see slapstick handled with grace--as anyone who has ever tried to milk laughs out of being smacked in the face with a gallon of paint or, in “Bushwhacked,” a sharp stone, realizes.

“I did 15 takes of that scene,” Stern says, “because it’s very difficult not to seem like you’re expecting it. It’s the look of surprise that makes it funny. And I wanted to get it just right.”

Obviously heedless of W.C. Fields’ advice to avoid acting opposite children and animals, Stern has lately been gravitating to family film projects such as “Home Alone,” “Bushwhacked,” “Little Monsters” and “Rookie of the Year.”

Part of the reason is he’s had plenty of experience holding his own against kids. Stern is the father of three, ranging in age from 6 to 13. Besides, he scoffs, “that W. C. Fields quote was a set-up, because he did it himself. You get a lot of play off with kids. And I get to be a bigger kid than them.”

How he got himself into this fine mess, he says, was via his rather pragmatic assessment of his abilities. “It’s both who I am and the parts they write. When I first started out I thought that, maybe, by the time I was 35 I’d be getting lead parts in movies. By the time I was 25, I saw that it was never going to happen.”

And if he does snag a lead, as in “Bushwhacked,” he doesn’t find his persona strong enough to carry the movie unless the balance between character and situation is perfectly struck. “It’s trickier for me than other actors,” he says. “I’m not confident enough in my own interestingness to think that others will be interested. The story has to be well thought out and I have to have a character to play. Otherwise I can’t quite take myself seriously.”

Stern may be the only person who doesn’t take himself seriously. He works constantly and says he’s always turning down projects, both as an actor, and more recently, a director.

After “Home Alone,” the then-head of 20th Century Fox, Joe Roth, had a script called “Rookie of the Year,” in which the young hero is a Little League pitcher named Henry. “Joe knew that I had a son named Henry who was a Little League pitcher. And that I had directed some ‘Wonder Years’ episodes [Stern was the narrative voice of Fred Savage as an adult in the series]. So he took a sweet chance on me.”

“Rookie” was a surprise hit, grossing more than $60 million, and led to “Bushwhacked,” which he was also supposed to direct, but decided against in order to concentrate on the best way to milk laughs from being hit in the head with a rock.

“I wouldn’t have made that movie well because I didn’t get it for a while. Then while we were in the middle of shooting, it came to me. It’s ‘Cliffhanger Jr.’ ”

He will next share the screen with another small creature in John Hughes’ “The Bee.” Stern has been brought aboard to direct and star as the tortured object of the yellow jacket’s cunning. There’ll be plenty of physical humor. Stern is hard at work fleshing out the plot. “I’m trying to get more characters going.”

The big-budget special-effects movie, being produced by Disney (where Roth is now chairman) will, he hopes, continue Stern’s skein of affording folks the opportunity to have a good laugh at his expense.