ACTING THE PART

Maybe someday, the jock’s room at Santa Anita will rival Schwab’s Drug Store on Hollywood and Vine where, legend has it, Lana Turner was discovered and a star was born.

Jockey Gary Stevens looks upon the day he shook the hand of movie director Gary Ross in a noisy, sweaty, cacophonous room where jockeys go to meditate about the next winner, wail about the last loser and brutally critique themselves over the split-second chance they’d had to move a 1,000-pound animal through the sliver of light and space that passes for an opening as the day that changed his future.

For when Ross shook Stevens’ hand and looked into his blue eyes, heard Stevens’ warm voice and felt his passion for his sport, Ross made a momentous decision. He decided to make Gary Stevens a movie actor.

Stevens, a Hall of Fame jockey, will be riding as many as six horses in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup races at Santa Anita.

And at 8 p.m. Saturday, Stevens will be on a flight to London, where he will enthusiastically promote “Seabiscuit,” the feel-good movie directed by Ross about a country’s spontaneous love affair with a special horse and the story about the jockey who rode Seabiscuit.

This dual life of Hollywood glitter mixed with the sweat, dirt, blood and bruises of the racetrack suits the 40-year-old Stevens for the moment.

A week before the Breeders’ Cup, Stevens was at home. His knees didn’t ache too badly. His back didn’t hurt much. All four of his kids -- Ashley, 20, whose fiance is in Iraq; T.C., 19, who works at Santa Anita in the television department; Riley, 14, “a skateboarder slash surfer,” Stevens said; and Carlie, 11, a “budding actress,” according to Stevens -- dashed about the house. So did four dogs. Cell phones rang with calls about parties and promotions and trips to Europe.

Stevens is grateful for the chance to ride Perfect Drift on Saturday, “one of the big favorites in the $4-million race,” he said; and Musical Chimes, a filly; and Zavata, a sprinter; and most of all Storming Home, “the best turf horse I’ve ever ridden,” Stevens said of the horse that nearly killed him.

On Aug. 16, Stevens felt himself dying.

He couldn’t draw a breath, and he drifted into and out of consciousness during an ambulance ride.

His mount in the Arlington Million, Storming Home, mysteriously swerved, cutting in front of the rest of the thundering field a few yards from the finish line. Stevens was thrown from the saddle. One horse narrowly missed stamping on Stevens’ head. Another’s hoof clipped Stevens’ chest.

Stevens was left with a punctured lung, which made catching his breath a scary and mostly futile exercise. He also had a broken vertebra, which made every other movement painful.

“I’ve had a lot of injuries,” Stevens said. “I’ve had nine operations on my right knee, three on my left. I’ve had both shoulders reconstructed. But this was as close to death as I want to get without going all the way. I was ready to go. I figured this was it, man.”

Stevens looked off into the distance as he spoke about Storming Home, about the horse’s swift, unexpected move, about his feelings as he lay on the ground.

Stevens was sitting on the patio of his Sierra Madre home where, not so many months ago, he was practicing his lines for “Seabiscuit.”

“I would be out here with my script and I’d see the neighbors out there and here I am, reading lines loud, saying the same line 10 different ways,” he said. “The neighbors had to think I was nuts.”

Stevens wasn’t nuts. He was an actor.

“Gary wasn’t self-conscious,” Ross said. “Gary wasn’t trying to be anything. In a lot of ways, Gary is an artistic soul. He’s a complicated guy whose emotions are close to the surface. But he is also relaxed, and when he acted, Gary was very confident.”

Stevens blinked. Now he sat on the patio thinking about horses to ride. Stevens is a jockey. But the phone would ring and it would be a movie publicist and he became an actor for the moment and for the future.

He was an actor because Ross had a feeling, had a sense, took a chance. He is an actor because he grabbed the chance with the same ferocity he had grabbed the reins of a horse when he was a 9-year-old growing up in Idaho.

“I didn’t read anybody else for the part of George Woolf,” Ross said. “I didn’t look at anybody else. What I noticed in the few minutes when I first met Gary was that he had the charming swagger of a champion, and he looked like a matinee idol.”

So just about a year ago, Stevens was beginning his work as an actor, stepping onto a movie set with young star Tobey Maguire, Academy Award nominee and future winner Chris Cooper, veteran Jeff Bridges and remarkable character actor William H. Macy.

Just about nine weeks ago, Stevens was falling head over heels off a horse and into intensive care.

And now Stevens will ride in horse racing’s annual climax, then go to Europe and promote “Seabiscuit,” then rest his aching, weary bones and think about what life holds in store.

“Making this movie is the only thing I’ve done outside of race riding that has given me that same kick, that same thrill,” Stevens said. “The movie experience gave me an adrenaline rush.

“Racing and making a movie, it’s very, very similar, the parallels. You know immediately when you’ve hit a scene. You know immediately when it’s right. It’s like riding a good race. You know if you’ve ridden a good race even if you don’t win. And you might win but have ridden a poor race and the horse overcame the trip you gave him.

“Acting is like that. You may have done a poor job, but everybody else’s performance took care of you. But because I was a rookie actor and I was working with Academy Award nominees, Academy Award winners on a pretty decently budgeted movie, I had a lot of pressure to succeed.

“And I’ve had pressure all my life.”

Stevens grew up on a farm in Idaho, son of a horse trainer, youngest of three boys, well acquainted with setbacks. As a child, he spent nearly a year wearing a metal brace to help correct a hip defect.

It was not a time when a little boy dreamed of being a movie star or a race rider or being named one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People.” Stevens still blushes at this honor, which he received this year, but then, he said, “It was an honor.”

There was something inside Stevens, though, a deep-seated belief that he was meant to succeed at something.

“I was never one to doubt myself,” he said. “I’ve always been about doing the job. I showed up every day to ride the horses. I didn’t look to find an acting part, but when it came my way, I went to work every day. I showed up to read my lines.”

Chris McCarron, a respected jockey himself and now general manager of Santa Anita, was the technical advisor for “Seabiscuit.” He has ridden against Stevens and was on the movie set nearly every day.

When McCarron met Stevens 20 years ago at Santa Anita, where the young jockey had come to make his mark in the big time, McCarron saw a “young perfectionist with a fiery, competitive attitude and very much inner confidence.”

McCarron’s evaluation was dead on the money. In 1997, Stevens became the second-youngest inductee into the Racing Hall of Fame. He has won eight Triple Crown races and won the 1998 Eclipse Award as North America’s outstanding jockey.

He retired once from racing, for 10 months, because his knees hurt, and pain can prompt a hasty decision. The life of being a jockey agent and a dilettante golfer didn’t suit Stevens.

So he returned to the track.

Stevens said his next retirement wouldn’t be accompanied by any news conference.

“You only want to announce one retirement,” he said. “Because you only want to announce one comeback.”

But his next retirement will also be accompanied by another passion.

“I didn’t even take drama in high school,” he said. “But now I know. I can do it. I don’t want to jinx myself by saying what, but there are more [acting] projects that are going to be happening.

“I’m passionate about it.”