PROFILE : The Actor Is In : Doors are flying open now for George Clooney, but the carefree star of ‘ER’ and ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ remembers not so long ago when his career needed CPR.

When George Clooney says, “As an actor, I’m somewhat of a hack,” the most disarming thing is how freely and unself-consciously he cops to the charge. This is not a man letting us in on a secret that torments his soul, nor is this a previously deluded thespian coming to a shocking revelation. It’s simply the matter of an incredibly popular guy understanding that he is phenomenally lucky, and not wanting to cloud the issue with tedious meditations on “the craft.”

He elaborates: “I find myself stealing from the actors that I really like as opposed to coming up with interesting choices on my own.” Without a trace of guile, he happily tells you that every other performer who stands alongside him on “ER,” the highest-rated series in television, does better work than he does (they are, in fact, among those from whom he steals), and adds, “The truth is, you don’t have to be a great actor on a show that’s this well written.”

As for an anecdote about his abilities, he mentions a play he once appeared in, which was seen by his uncle, Jose Ferrer. “I was crying and yelling and spitting and doing everything in it. Joe was sitting in the back and afterward I went to him and said, ‘What do you think?’ And he said, ‘I would say to you, “Get the scenery out of your mouth, you don’t know where it’s been!” ’ “

So, what accounts for all his success? “I hired a good publicist,” he answers, and he’s not trying to make a joke.

Of course, it’s easy to be that self-effacing when nearly everyone else in Hollywood disagrees. Clooney, the first “ER” cast member hired for the show, received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Doug Ross, the pediatrician who is dedicated to his work when he’s on the clock, and equally dedicated to womanizing and partying when he’s off.

As “ER” producer John Wells allows, “He’s so personable and good-looking and your first impulse is to think that he doesn’t have the chops as an actor. I knew he could do the part--I thought he was the part. But when you see him carry scenes, you see his strength as an actor, that was a revelation. It’s rare that you find an attractive romantic leading man who is both affable and photogenic and can also work dramatic material.

“He’s gonna be a tremendous success. That’s one of the reasons we want to keep him happy.”

At first glance, keeping Clooney happy doesn’t seem to be that difficult. The son of TV personality Nick Clooney and nephew of singer Rosemary Clooney (who at one time was married to Ferrer), he’s tirelessly agreeable and celebrated as a relentless practical joker. Divorced once, he’s more content to spend time with his peg pot-bellied pig than to date any one person. Sitting comfortably in his “ER” trailer in a bowling shirt, jeans and Harley-Davidson boots, he shows off a gift from Harvey Keitel--a poster-sized photo from early in Keitel’s career with a note congratulating Clooney on his “enema nomination”--as well as embarrassing publicity photos from his own lean years that most actors would sooner burn.

Clooney, 34, scarcely has unkind words for anyone, save Ed. Weinberger, a writer-producer on “Baby Talk,” one of the many failed TV shows from his past--the two feuded vociferously behind the scenes, and Clooney left the show before it ever aired. And since his reputation leans toward the roguish, all his don’t-worry-be-happy musings don’t seem part of the hollow,Hollywood’s-just-one-big-happy support-system mentality.

He dismisses his status as a hunk by saying, “I’m a flavor of the month, it’s just been a very long month.” His insouciance regarding his star trip is best summed up by Wells, who says, “I think of George as a Rat Packer displaced by 30 years.”

But underneath the easygoing exterior there’s a powerful load of ambition, and a better sense of the business side of show business than most actors possess, or would ever admit to having.

“When you’ve failed enough--I’ve failed so many times, I did five pilots in one year, which is some kind of record--you just learn how to be good at the business,” he says. “I’m probably better at the business side than I am at acting. I’ve always understood how quickly these things go away and how, when you have some clout, you can use it.”

Clooney clearly articulates the pros and cons of every move in his career, and a decided pro would be his first film not to sit on a shelf or go direct to video. In director Robert Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Till Dawn,” opening Friday, he plays a killer on the lam from the law who, with Keitel, Juliette Lewis and Quentin Tarantino (who wrote the script) in tow, unexpectedly stumbles into a strip club overrun with vampires.

Clooney says doing the movie was an easy choice.

“After doing enough pilots, I’m used to where you read the script and think, ‘If this is directed by Coppola, it’s gonna be great.’ But of course it’s not, it’s directed by some schmo. You always picture something when you read it at its best, but what you learn is, when you read it, picture it at its worst. And when I read this, I thought, well, at its worst, I get to work with Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Quentin, Robert, Miramax--the coolest people in film. For me, that’s a coup.”

What Wells refers to as keeping Clooney happy turns out to mean tinkering with “ER’s” production schedule so that he can appear in films--it happened with “From Dusk Till Dawn” at the beginning of this season; it will happen again at the end of the season as well: It’s in the process of being rigged so that he can co-star with Michelle Pfeiffer in the romantic comedy “One Fine Day.”

Clooney says, “I said, ‘When we sit down and talk about these dates, first and foremost, let me take this ammunition out of my own hands by saying I am in no way threatening leaving the show if we can’t make these dates work.’

“When I wanted to do ‘Dusk Till Dawn,’ I went into John and said, ‘John, I got the movie because of the show. Period. If I can’t do the movie, then I can’t do the movie, because this show created it. However. . . . ‘ As opposed to going in and saying, ‘I got this movie, I want you guys to make it happen,’ or letting agents handle it. It’s much easier and much better to look the guys you’re working with right in the eye and let them know where you stand.”

Even if the dates can’t work on “One Fine Day,” Clooney will nonetheless enjoy a $3-million payday during the series’ hiatus by starring in “Peacekeeper,” an adventure thriller about nuclear terrorists that’s slated to be DreamWorks SKG’s long-awaited maiden theatrical release. To star in “Peacekeeper,” he had to abandon another $3-million paycheck for another big-budget movie, “The Green Hornet,” though he promised that film’s producers that he would return to the project next year if they can wait.

“It’s funny--David Caruso, I don’t know if it was a wise move or not, what he did,” Clooney says of the actor who bolted “NYPD Blue” for a movie career that has yet to bear fruit (see Film Clips, Page 37). “There were a lot of other things involved other than, ‘Hey, I want to do movies’--you don’t know what else was involved. I can guess, having quit shows before and been in bad fights with people.

“But what he did for us as actors ended up being very good. It may end up not being the greatest thing for his career, but it helped us a lot because studios and networks are so afraid of us leaving shows now if you’re on a popular show that they’ll now say, ‘Aw, give him a couple of episodes off if he wants to do a movie.’ That’s a great advantage. It’s probably the best time ever to be talent--or, quote-unquote, ‘talent’--I use that term very, very lightly.”

Director Rodriguez doesn’t take the term so lightly--he admits that his goal was to make Clooney a bona fide movie star with his film, adding that his choice to cast the good doctor as a bad guy was completely instinctual. “I had never seen his work, and it got to the point that I didn’t want to, because I was afraid it might be bad,” Rodriguez says. “I saw a couple of episodes of ‘ER,’ and there were some movie-kind of close-ups on him--that made a big impression.

“And it turns out he has the horror-movie bloodline--he was in ‘Return of the Killer Tomatoes.’ The first day of shooting, he pulled up on his Harley, in his motorcycle boots. I thought, ‘He’s more a bad guy than a good guy.’ He plays this terrible guy, but there’s something in his face that just pulls you along. You see there’s a human being in there. There’s mystery and danger, yet you sense he’s a nice guy. It was just meant to happen.”

Tarantino says that his co-star’s future stardom is “pretty well a no-brainer. He has it, it’s literally that simple. He has that young Steve McQueen or Robert Mitchum quality. Right now, he’s big on making fun of what he’s done in the past, but he was in this movie, ‘Red Surf,’ which was a really good movie, and he was wonderful in it. He’s much better than he lets on.”

Clooney says that working on “From Dusk Till Dawn”--though the film was never intended to be much more than a quirky exploitation flick--taught him nonetheless about acting and discipline. “When you’re working on a TV series, and a director comes in, you can’t really do what they tell you. They come on the show and want to make their episode something special--’This is the one where Dr. Ross cries.’ But you can’t do every one of those. So you learn how to direct yourself and not pay attention to the director. They’ll say, ‘Do it this way,’ and you say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and you’ll do it your way, and everything is moving too fast for them to notice.

“And the first few days on the set of the film, Robert was, ‘Do it this way,’ and I was, ‘Yeah yeah yeah, got it,’ and I’d do it my way. And he said to me, ‘You’re not doing it,’ and I said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ I had to learn how to be directed again.”

While “Dusk” might seem an unlikely first post-stardom film, Clooney says that once “ER” emerged as an instant hit, “I got offered a couple of leads in movies, the first million-dollar payday for me, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s great,’ and then read it and said, ‘You know, I can’t do it.’ I couldn’t have my first film be his big payday and end up beingthis cheesy, one-step-up-from-a-movie-of-the-week-type thing. Because I’d ice that end of my career. I spent my life doing bad television and bit by bit worked my way up to better and better television. I wanted a small, two or three scenes in a good film.

“Now that things are really popping for me, it makes it that much more difficult. Because I only get a chance to squeeze in one, maybe two films a year. Which makes films a lot more important to me, they have to do better.”

And Clooney is very circumspect about what he picks. “From Dusk Till Dawn” appealed to him because it was an ensemble piece; he wasn’t required to carry the film. Same with “One Fine Day”--”I’d be covering a lot of genres and because Michelle is clearly the movie star and the lead, I get to ride on her tremendous coattails. On neither this film nor Michelle’s would I be the person on whose shoulders it’s carried.

“On the DreamWorks project, my advantage is that although I’m the lead, the movie itself is the star, the action and the scale. These movies have a life of their own where you could put a lot of different people in them and they would still hold up. I’m a little protected by that, but on the other hand, at that point, I’ll have had a couple of films out, and I’ll be sticking my chin out to get smacked a few times. But you get paid good money, you’re gonna get popped a few times.”

Yet Clooney insists that “ER” is not simply a sleek vehicle existing solely to drive him to movie stardom. “About 15 of the 22 shows we do on this series a year are as good as most feature films you see, and we do those in eight days,” he says. “It’s something to be proud of. This is one of the few times in my experience where I’ve felt, ‘Hey, this isn’t just not bad, it’s good.’ ”

The series has become a habit for more than 35 million viewers weekly, thanks to its adrenaline-charged look at the breakneck-paced chaos in a Chicago emergency room. Due to its large ensemble cast performing delicately choreographed maneuvers and spouting complex medical jargon during elaborate Steadicam shots, Clooney says, “The style of the show was the star of the show, initially--the style of the show and the time slot. I’m not complaining, but it’s an enormously difficult job. But we kind of revel in it now, we’ve gotten good at it. You learn as a surgeon learns when he first starts, everyone handles everything so delicately, but the truth is, these guys in ‘ER’ are carpenters. Once you learn how to not be tentative, it becomes fun.

“But we can’t get caught up in our own gimmick, which is doors busting open, gurneys flying through, because that gets old pretty quick. So we’ve had to develop the characters, and people are hooked on the characters--the difference is, when we do a kind of a soap opera scene, it’s over the top of a body while we’re in surgery.”

Though he and the other actors may have the occasional side project, Clooney says: “No one has any interest in going anywhere because most of us have worked a long time on bad projects. Once you’ve done those, you really understand when it’s nice.”

But his ambition once again slips through when he returns to his bedeviling schedule--with the series and all the films, he’s booked for a solid year, and then some. “The good news is, I have a show to go back to,” he says with a laugh, “and the bad news is, I have a show to go back to.”