Sparring partner

A film about a champion must have a seemingly indestructible peril toward which our unstoppable hero hurtles. Superman had kryptonite; Neo had his Agent Smith; even “Rocky IV” had sleek Russian super-bully Ivan Drago. In director Ron Howard’s newest, “Cinderella Man,” the story of Depression-era Everyman boxer James J. Braddock, that malignant menace blocking the redemptive light at the end of the tunnel is heavyweight titleholder Max Baer.

For this nemesis, Howard found actor Craig Bierko. The voluble Bierko is a lot of man: big biceps, well over 6 feet, now at 225 pounds. He has huge eyes, scuffed Prada shoes and a killer deadpan. A former Westchester Country Club busboy, he has perfect teeth, an oft-tabloided love of blond women (though he spent a year with the usually brunet Janeane Garofalo, and it’s hard to imagine how the two talkers ever heard each other), a fear of deep open water and a perhaps ironic obsession with the work of David Icke, the English conspiracy crackpot who believes that President Clinton is one of the lizard people.

Bierko was also the superb villain in the underrated 1996 Renny Harlin action flick “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” the ADD-troubled, jazz-loving boyfriend of Carrie Bradshaw on “Sex and the City,” and a longtime veteran of pilot seasons past -- and now present, with a role in CBS’ upcoming John Leguizamo pilot.

Bierko paused recently for lunch at Vento, though it’s hard to get food into his mouth around all the words, in the Meatpacking District’s triangular building -- the building, in fact, that was the site of Ed Harris’ self-defenestration in “The Hours.”

“One can be reasonably sure,” he said of the upcoming pilot, “that it’ll be another million-dollar home movie for Mother Bierko. I have so many pilots.” (The pilot is actually well-anticipated, and was directed by Brett Ratner.)

Last August in Toronto, he spent a month shooting that wish fulfillment fantasy of many: repeatedly punching Russell Crowe -- who played Howard’s populist boxer hero Braddock -- in the face.

The scene, it seems, started immediately: “We got up there and he had his 40th birthday party and I was the one guy who wasn’t invited. I was like, I get it!

“It was made very clear to me by people involved in the movie that Russell wouldn’t be friendly to me,” Bierko said, “because I was playing his adversary. Not because of any other reason than that’s how Russell works. And that’s absolutely fine. This isn’t high school. I’m doing this because I want to buy my apartment -- and because this is my life. I’ve actually gone out and beat the street for 15 years and earned a Ron Howard movie. So I will do everything I know how to do to support Russell in his performance.”

From reading to shooting, Bierko had only three months to train at Gleason’s Gym, where he studied with Hector Roca, who famously did up Hilary Swank for “Million Dollar Baby.” The work -- six days a week, three hours a day -- was a success: In the film’s main event, Bierko’s Baer is all long back, twisting with jabs, his endlessly long arms simian and terrifying.

But in person, nothing about Bierko looks like the dandy fiend on screen.

The real-life Baer has been eviled-up a bit for the film -- and Bierko plays him as an egotistical gasbag gadfly being beaten down: “You take an ego and you pin it up in very bright light, and over the fight, you watch it shrivel up and die.”

Though Bierko has worked fairly equally in TV, film and theater, what got him on People’s “sexiest men alive” list was his Tony-nominated turn in the 2000 Broadway revival of “The Music Man.” But how did burly Bierko end up a theater nerd?

“The first play I ever saw was ‘Pippin.’ ... I was 9 years old, and I was like, why are we not going to see ‘Capricorn One’ or whatever? ... We ate dinner at the Howard Johnson’s, and we walked over to the Imperial Theatre. And that ... show started, and Ben Vereen came out. And he looked like -- at that point they’d come out with the new black GI Joes with the real hair -- and I was like, he looks as cool as the black GI Joes with the real hair! He came out, and he’s dressed in black, and he starts singing about putting on a show on a blank stage ... and then the lights came up, and I’m telling you, it was like: bosoms. Barely concealed. And it was like: Bosoms? ... That’s what I’m doing. Literally, that was the moment, that was my moment.... That’s a job? That’s what I’m doing.”

Of course it was 25 years later, 12 years of it in Los Angeles -- after torture including a season of Valerie Bertinelli’s 1990 private eye sitcom “Sydney,” and guest spots from “Wings” to “Murphy Brown” -- that Bierko finally mopped up the aisles of Broadway with his Harold Hill.

THEY WERE OUT FOR BLOOD

The “Cinderella Man” boxing match took a month to film, a shirtless month of swapping sweat and stage blood with Crowe, and of the two 40-year-olds injuring themselves. (Bierko ripped an abdominal muscle and fractured his wrist.) And yet? “I don’t know him from Adam. There was literally not a single moment where I felt like we were actually bonding. Or having a conversation. Even -- there were cursory greetings. And I was almost sorry he did this .... He had a physician there, this really great physician. And I was having some trouble, because I’d tweaked my back. And he sent this guy over. And I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t want to see the nice guy behind the curtain.’

“He really did create a laboratory environment that was incredibly helpful to me,” Bierko said. “I’m telling you, it’s like when the Road Runner [passes through the road painted onto] the brick wall. You know you’re going to go down that road -- but then you hit that brick wall. You have to allow yourself to be caught up in it, and then you have to let it go. And it’s a very tricky thing to do. There’s not a lot of actors who do that anymore. This guy is helping you -- helping you want to kill him.”

“Cinderella Man” opens June 3 from Universal.