Career moves make giants turn gentle

While baseball wrestles with flushing steroids from the game, Hollywood’s figured out how to give their musclemen a testosterone-softening makeover that builds audiences.

With “The Pacifier,” brooding he-man poster boy Vin Diesel turned the role of a Navy SEAL-turned-baby-sitter to a rambunctious family of five into a new No. 1 movie, showing that tough guys do dance when the wiggling worm on the hook is an estimated $30.2-million opening weekend gross.

And Diesel isn’t the only one tweaking his bruiser image to show a lighter side. We’ve already watched gangsta rap legend Ice Cube tormented by brats in the popular PG road comedy “Are We There Yet?” and seen stoic hard case Tommy Lee Jones as a Texas Ranger ruffled by a pompom squad in the recent “Man of the House.” Then there’s this weekend’s other big movie, the “Get Shorty” sequel “Be Cool,” in which former smackdown artist Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson plays a gay henchman.

How do you make someone whom audiences reflexively categorize as a no-nonsense brute into a huggable comedy star? “Pacifier” director Adam Shankman says the key for the film was not asking Diesel to switch abruptly from macho hero to slapstick clown. “He’s actually the straight guy to the mayhem around him,” says Shankman. “As long as he understood he didn’t have to be Steve Martin, I thought, we’re going to be in great shape.”

It’s no accident that the premise requires Diesel’s character to win over a family, or that one commercial for the film excitedly plugs “the new kid-friendly Vin Diesel!” After only a few years, the mysteriously multiethnic slab with the gravelly voice was threatening to lose what was magnetic about him in “The Fast and the Furious.”

The lackluster box office showing for “The Chronicles of Riddick” last year indicated that his meteoric rise could have a nasty flipside. By goofing on himself now in a family outing akin to Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Kindergarten Cop,” Diesel gives moviegoing parents a chance to see him romance a teacher (Lauren Graham), do a silly dance to lull a child to sleep, and in one subplot -- the ultimate sop to cultural sensitivity -- bond with the artsy eldest boy by directing a community theater musical.

As for Johnson, there may not be a more cheerfully hilarious movie star moment in 2005 than seeing the wrestling sensation and action god in a full-moon afro, white silk shirt and freakishly tight blue pants smiling into a mirror and slapping his butt as he proudly pronounces himself “Scorchin’!”

But wait, there might be another, also from “Be Cool.” Johnson’s character, Elliot Wilhelm, has been lying in wait to kill movie-turned-music mogul Chili Palmer (John Travolta), but gets distracted by the prospect that Chili might get the would-be actor an audition.

Elliot then launches into a monologue, actually a two-character showdown from the teen cheerleading flick “Bring It On”: trash talk, neck rolls, snaps and all. It’s a deadpan classic of gonzo sincerity that, coming from this 6-foot-5 onetime wrestler, crystallizes the wit in author Elmore Leonard’s wry tale of Hollywood wannabes better than anything else in the movie.

As a 180-degree turn, Elliot could give Johnson his firmest standing yet as a star of immense appeal, something recent movies like “The Rundown” and “Walking Tall” only hinted at before his natural charisma became overshadowed by combat pyrotechnics. His delightful contribution to “Be Cool” then -- hailed even by critics who eviscerated the rest of the movie -- is reminiscent of what Schwarzenegger achieved as the sweet, scholarly, virginal brother to Danny DeVito in Ivan Reitman’s nose-bleed-high concept 1988 comedy “Twins.”

Over lunch recently, the 32-year-old actor enthused about the part, for which he unhesitatingly took a pay cut so he could show his range. Not only did Johnson relish getting to play a proud gay man on screen (he’s a professed social liberal), but recognized where he and Elliot intersected: “The fact that he was an aspiring actor, that was me five years ago.”

It wasn’t a coincidence, either, as Johnson found out when he met the “Be Cool” author. “[Leonard] said, ‘It’s funny, I wrote this character with you in mind,’ ” recalled Johnson. Even the Rock’s signature raised eyebrow from his wrestling days that he sends up in the movie? “He said, ‘This was you trying to break into Hollywood, when you were known for wrestling.’ I said, ‘That’s great!’ ”

In “The Pacifier,” Diesel “saw the benefit of stretching himself as an actor,” said producer Roger Birnbaum. “And I don’t think this is a one-shot for him. I think comedies will punctuate his entire career now.”

That was the case with Schwarzenegger, who courted Reitman -- responsible for comedy blockbusters “Stripes” and “Ghostbusters” -- and told him: “I could be a Ghostbuster.”

“Twins” grew out of that seed planted in Reitman’s brain -- the Terminator in a comedy -- and suddenly an R-rated icon to young males was pulling in female ticket-buyers as well.

“Arnold very much credited ‘Twins’ with opening up his career,” says the producer/director. “It showed people he could act, that he was more dimensional, that he could talk.”

Ultimately, though, it’s the combination of star with material, something Sylvester Stallone never figured out when he tried the same left-turn with the leaden farce “Oscar” and “Stop or My Mom Will Shoot,” movies he appeared to be dropped into, rather than having been fashioned for him.

“Twins,” on the other hand, shrewdly sets itself up as a simple fable with the patently absurd scenario that the Teutonic titan had been raised on an island immersed in books and high culture, oblivious to modern life. It makes his appearance in L.A. to look for his brother -- wearing shorts, smiling and licking an ice cream cone -- silly enough to accept.

The setup for “Kindergarten Cop” is careful as well, grounded more in standard gritty cop stuff before surrounding him with grade-schoolers. In both “Twins” and “Cop,” though, action mitigated cutesiness. When Schwarzenegger played a pregnant scientist for Reitman in “Junior,” the audience stayed away, as if this version of empathetic role-playing sounded like anything but a lark.

Venturing away from what audiences are used to, though, starts with a sense of humor about oneself, something Johnson understood as a wrestling star and a trait he admires in his idol, Clint Eastwood, who once turned partnering with an orangutan (“Every Which Way but Loose”) into a hit.

Johnson loves comedy as much as blowing stuff up, he jokes, and sees his career in terms of chances to act, not just action/adventure at bats. It’s where the longevity lies, he said.

“With Elliot, I could be fearless, creative, swing for the fences,” he said. “That’s the best part about acting. You can create. That blue outfit in ‘Be Cool’? It’s like, ‘You know what? Let’s make it a little tighter.’ ”