Misunderstood

Fifteen-year-old Dennis Green had every reason to be terrified. Here he was on his first acting job, and rather than appearing in some small indie film, he was playing opposite Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in one of the summer’s biggest action movies, “Bad Boys II.”

As if the pressure wasn’t high enough, Lawrence was showing a lot more bad-boy attitude than the part required. Before the cameras rolled, a sound man had clipped a microphone onto the actor’s shirt, sending the actor into a tirade, as Lawrence loudly complained that the technician had pricked him and had to be fired. Then Lawrence’s behemoth bodyguard approached the slender Green and sternly told him that, unless they were acting together, the novice actor should never, ever, make eye contact with the top-billed performer.

It was exactly the kind of behavior you might expect from a $20-million-a-picture star known to have an ego as outsized as his entourage.

Yet the joke was on Green.

Lawrence had concocted both the tirade and the bodyguard’s warning so the neophyte performer would be as rattled as his character. It worked perfectly, for the scene of the petrified teenager trying to take a girl on a date is arguably the freshest and funniest in the entire sequel, which opens Friday.

It’s taken some time -- and a series of unfortunate real-life events -- for Lawrence to be able to laugh at himself. The comedian has parlayed a stand-up and TV career (he was discovered on “Star Search”) into a number of successful movie roles. With “Bad Boys II,” Lawrence is poised to have his biggest box-office hit yet.

That imminent success, coupled with last year’s self-analytical concert film “Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat,” has helped create a new focus in Lawrence’s life, which could have been cut short twice in the last seven years.

“I’m still in this game and I’m still very much going strong,” says Lawrence, 38. “For all my trials and tribulations, I am a man with a good heart. I am not out to hurt nobody. I just want to make you laugh.”

Most people recognize Lawrence as the star of the 1990s sitcom “Martin” and funny movies from “Big Momma’s House” to “Blue Streak.” He’s also famous for what has befallen him far away from movie sets, a string of transgressions that kept Lawrence in the tabloids longer than some of his movies stayed in theaters.

Because Hollywood values box-office appeal far more than off-screen behavior, the blunders never damaged Lawrence’s career. In fact, they gave him good material for his comedy routine.

Lawrence was hospitalized in 1996 after wandering into Ventura Boulevard and dodging traffic in a marijuana daze. He also was carrying a gun that Lawrence now says could easily have gotten him shot by police, with whom he fought; he was detained but not arrested. Two months after that incident, Lawrence was arrested at Burbank Airport for carrying a loaded gun in his carry-on bag, and received two years’ probation. Later that year, his wife obtained a restraining order as part of a divorce.

In 1997, he was arrested following a nightclub brawl and was sentenced to community service. In 1999, his temperature hit 107 degrees and he fell into a three-day coma after going for a jog in a rubber suit and wool cap in the middle of a hot summer day.

The body temperature has returned to normal, and so, it appears, has his temperament. Sitting in his Ventura Boulevard production office, not far from the scene of the 1996 incident, Lawrence discussed his missteps, declining to comment only on his first marriage and the 1996 lawsuit filed against him by “Martin” co-star Tisha Campbell-Martin, who alleged Lawrence harassed and battered her. The lawsuit was settled out of court.

Lawrence says he is actually thankful for some of his biggest mistakes because they helped him find a new direction, one that includes becoming a better father to his three young daughters and encircling himself with more reliable friends.

“I’d gladly go through it all again to rid myself of the roaches that were around me,” Lawrence says, without naming names. “And if I had to see what I needed to see now, if I had to go down that trail again, then bring it on, if it gets rid of all those devils that were trying to cloud me. I don’t really have to doubt the people I have in my life right now.”

Lawrence was able to exorcise many of his demons through his work, specifically in 2002’s “Martin Lawrence Live,” which Lawrence says was strongly influenced by “Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip,” in which Pryor discussed his cocaine abuse and self-immolation.

Lawrence’s often raunchy concert features several monologues in which the actor addresses not only his problems but also the glee with which the media reported them. In fact, Lawrence opens the movie with clips from various tabloid TV “experts” assessing his behavior.

“To hear that kind of stuff was probably the hardest part of making it,” Lawrence says. “To really find a way to tell the story, I had to keep reliving it, and keep going over and over it again. It was a constant reminder to the stumbles in my life. It made me stronger to really want to weather the storm. So at the same time it was difficult, I was very thankful that God blessed me to be able to go in there and face it. My life has given me some of my best material. But it’s also given me some of the best lessons.”

Amy Pascal, chairman of Columbia Pictures, who has made three movies with Lawrence -- including the “Bad Boys” sequel -- says the actor gets an unfair rap. She says his problems have been blown out of proportion.

“He is a very misunderstood guy,” she says. Everybody, she says, has personal problems, and Lawrence’s “affect the press but not the audience.”

With his personal life now on a better path, Lawrence has worked constantly, making six movies in less than three years. In “Bad Boys II,” he is reunited with Smith in a story about two Miami narcotics detectives battling a Cuban drug lord. While Smith may be a better-known star in some circles, producer Jerry Bruckheimer says the sequel is just as much Lawrence’s film: “The combination is phenomenal, but they are both great individually.”

Michael Bay, who made his directorial debut with Lawrence and Smith in 1995’s “Bad Boys,” says Lawrence can play the petulant movie star, but that it’s mostly an act -- and one he’s left behind, for the most part.

“On the first movie, there was a little bit of attitude,” says Bay. “So I pulled him aside and said, ‘What’s with this attitude?’

After that, the director says, Lawrence was respectful. On the sequel, Bay says, “He was always very accommodating, on time and willing to work.”

Lawrence says he is more accommodating than his reputation suggests.

“Sometimes there are people that are rude and not respectful, and things happen,” Lawrence says, alluding to the time he insisted that a camera assistant on “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” be fired for accidentally hitting Lawrence in the head with a film clapper. “Have I mellowed? I was never difficult. It would be a joy to work with me. Why? Because I’m someone who wants what’s best for the overall project, not just what’s best for me.”

He has not forgotten how some people in the media delighted over his problems.

“First of all, I never knew anybody who said he wanted to grow up and be a critic,” Lawrence says. “There are some [critics] who are professional [and] do their job. I ain’t talking about them. But the ones who attack personally, who don’t really do their jobs thoroughly, the ones who just speak because they have the forum to speak and come from a negative place -- I ain’t got no love for them. Those are the people who, you know, kick you when you’re down, but I have to say I’m up.”

He’s up, he says, because he has perspective, most of which came after his heat exhaustion-induced unconsciousness.

“Before the coma, I was really in a lot of pain. I felt like God laid me down to wake me up again. Even though I can remember everything, I don’t see life the way I once saw it.”

Yet something still eats at Lawrence. He believes he can be just as successful in drama as in comedy. As much as he reveres Eddie Murphy, he truly admires the careers of Jim Carrey and Robin Williams, who have moved between both genres.

He may soon get his chance.

Columbia’s Pascal says she is developing an unspecified dramatic remake that would star Lawrence. “He can do it,” says Pascal. “Martin has a huge following, and he is beloved.”

But so far, Lawrence hasn’t been asked to do anything more serious than dodge movie bullets.

“I’ve been blessed to be able to make you laugh in sitcoms, concert films, stand-up specials, movies -- so we know that that’s something I can do,” Lawrence says. “Well, there’s a drama side to me, and the drama side happened in my real life. And because this happened in my real life, obviously I know something about it.

“But I think everybody gets comfortable with what they call the ‘safe face’ -- it’s better for you to make us laugh than cry -- and that’s the image that they want to put on you. Then you’ll find that they may only want to pay for one thing. But smart money would say bet on somebody who can shoot the jump shot and dunk.”