He’s No Sociopath Off the Screen : Movies: Actor Tom Sizemore, a lawless type in ‘Natural Born Killers,’ ‘Devil in a Blue Dress’ and ‘Strange Days,’ is globe-hopping to promote his new films.

There’s an irony in meeting actor Tom Sizemore at the Four Seasons Hotel. Here’s a guy who’s recently played sociopaths and near sociopaths (“Natural Born Killers,” “Devil in a Blue Dress” and “Strange Days”) choosing a place that smells sweetly of Casablanca lilies and features marble floors, peach furnishings, piped-in classical music and the discrete air of big money.

“I like the bar,” he says. “And it’s got air-conditioning.”

He tosses a pack of cigarettes on a table and makes himself at home. He’s wearing a billowy white shirt, gym shorts and sneakers without socks. His hair is short and gray, Steve McQueen style. It’s a look that changes from movie to movie. For “Devil,” based on the Walter Mosley detective novel of the same name and directed by Carl Franklin, “I had that little mustache and my hair was weird. I gained weight and looked kind of sloppy.”

Sizemore did these terrible things to himself because the character he plays, Albright, who hires the hero, Easy Rawlins (played by Denzel Washington), to find a white girl in circa 1948 black L.A., was significantly older in the book.

“They were talking about J.T. Walsh, Harvey Keitel, those kind of guys,” says Sizemore, who’s 32. “After I met Carl and Denzel, there was talk about how we could age me. I came up with the idea of gaining weight. First I pumped iron and then I put on 15 pounds and then I stopped exercising. So I was kind of thick.”

Refreshingly, Sizemore is honest enough to admit that he didn’t like looking that way. “I had a hard time watching the movie because I couldn’t get past that,” he says. “I may be a vain person, but I’m not a vain performer.”

It’s sometimes hard to separate the two, and in Sizemore’s case, it worked to his benefit. Franklin immediately bought into the idea that Sizemore is a little bit of a hood. “He came in and he was the guy,” Franklin says. “He brought it into the room. He’s from Detroit, and he’s probably had to punch a few people.”

When apprised of this, Sizemore says: “That’s interesting. I was a tough kid. I don’t punch people anymore.”

Not if his parents have anything to say about it. His father was a philosophy professor and later a lawyer, so Sizemore received a generous helping of academia alongside the mean streets stuff. At the same time, he was aware that relatives on both sides of the family were, as he puts it, “in and out of prison. They’re drug dealers. They’re basement people. They don’t work. They live in Detroit.” Making certain this did not happen to his family, Sizemore’s father moved them out to the suburbs, but after a year he and his wife divorced, and 15-year-old Sizemore returned to Detroit along with his two younger brothers and their 34-year-old mother.

“I wanted to get on with my life when I was 16,” Sizemore says. “I knew I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to get out of Detroit.”

He did, by way of Wayne State University, Temple University and the struggling actor routine in New York, where he acted in several Off Broadway plays. He appeared on half a dozen episodes of “China Beach” and made his feature film debut in a bit part in Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July.” That was followed by a series of equally innocuous roles in such films as “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man,” “Guilty by Suspicion,” “Lock-Up” and “Passenger 57.”

After this apprenticeship he began getting larger parts, notably Bat Masterson in Lawrence Kasdan’s “Wyatt Earp.” And then came Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” in which he played a serial killer expert who identifies a little too closely with the people he’s trying to catch.

“Something like ‘NBK,’ ” Sizemore says, “I knew the lay of the land there. I knew it intellectually, and I knew it first-hand.”

It was while playing Albright in “Devil” that Sizemore was cast in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Strange Days.” (He had worked with her twice before, in “Blue Steel” and--uncredited--”Point Break.”) After 14 weeks on “Devil,” he wrapped his part at 6:30 in the morning. Eighteen hours later, he reported to the set of “Strange Days” for the first 15 weeks of night shoots.

“It was fun,” Sizemore says glibly about the effects- and stunt-heavy movie, which his character, Max, pals around with a hustler of hardware (Ralph Fiennes) that can literally play back other people’s thoughts, feelings and emotions. Thinking over his appraisal of the shoot, he adds: “When I say ‘fun,’ I mean ‘satisfying.’ I’m not sure ‘fun’ would be sufficient.”

Sizemore would probably say the same thing about his last release of this busy year, “Heat,” starring Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer and Al Pacino and directed by Michael Mann. He was in the running for the role early on when he bumped into De Niro at a social function.

“He called me over to his table and said he’d seen my movies and thought I was terrific, in that Bob way” (and here Sizemore imitates De Niro to perfection): “You were really”--snickers awkwardly--”good, really, you know, good.”

Shortly thereafter Sizemore’s agents at CAA, which also happens to represent De Niro, Pacino and Kilmer, were passed the script for their client to look at. After meetings with Mann and De Niro, he was cast. He then joined De Niro and Kilmer for a month of commando training, since they would be playing commando-style bank robbers.

“I’m that way myself,” Sizemore says of this sort of role immersion. “I don’t want to do anything I don’t know how to do. I don’t want to have a gun on me if I don’t know how to take it apart and put it back together.”

With all these films in the can, Sizemore is going hither and yon to promote them: Italy, back to L.A., Toronto, New York. This is the first time he’s been on such a juggernaut, and he’s thrilled to be here. The tough guy, which has more to do with his manner than his essence, is revealed to be a man who’s ambitious, who wants to go to the next level, both professionally and personally. He’s ready for bigger roles (he’s been offered one). He’s planning to move to northern Malibu, where his actor pal Michael Madsen lives (he’s godfather of Madsen’s son, Hudson). And he’s talking about getting married to his girlfriend, former tennis pro and sometime “Bold and the Beautiful” actress Maeve Quinlan (they met on “Natural Born Killers”).