His choice of roles may not always be wise, but Alec Baldwin - the biggest Baldwin of them all - is actually one of the sharpest men in the movie business.

In that rasp of a voice that is at turns sinister and seductive, Alec Baldwin is making his case to play the hero.

"I can't stand playing the bad guy anymore," he complains. "I want to stop sending that vibe out - I don't want to be Vincent Price."

His looks, a virtual dictionary definition of handsome, make it easy to envision him as a leading man. But it's the string of darker roles - from his intense seven-minute speech in 'Glengarry Glen Ross' to his menacing turn as a hitman in the otherwise forgettable 'The Juror' - that has kept his career going since he surrendered Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series to Harrison Ford.

With 'Ghosts of Mississippi', due out just before Christmas, he gets another chance to be the good guy - and to resurrect his inconsistent career. As a crusading lawyer out to nail Byron De La Beckwith, the racist assassin of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Baldwin has his dream role. Part Gregory Peck in 'To Kill A Mockingbird' - he's even a devoted single father - and part Denzel Washington in 'Philadelphia', he revels in the unabashedly liberal ethic of the true story.

Since director Rob Reiner's quest to make the movie authentic - down to filming at the Evers house, where the murder as committed 33 years ago - bordered on the compulsive, it's not hard to see why he cast Baldwin as the prosecutor. When the actor stands in his trailer on the set of his next movie, Bookworm, to emphasize a point, he gestures grandly and raises his voice. His tone turns from forceful intelligence to condescension. His face is covered by his Bookworm scruffy beard and dried-blood makeup, making him even more intimidating. And though Bobby DeLaughter, the man he portrays in Ghosts of Mississippi, is about as easy to deify as they come, Baldwin manages to find something less than saintly about him.

"Every once in a while," the actor says, "there's a glint in his eye like a football player who can't wait to get his helmet in the other guy's shoulder."

DeLaughter, still a lawyer in the Jackson D.A.'s office, claims the actor was his personal preference for the part from the start. But Baldwin is up front about the fact that he was not Reiner's first choice. "In the end, we're all doing movies Tom Hanks turned down," he says wryly. "It's Tom's world. We just live in it."

Actually it was the other Tom - Cruise - whom Reiner originally had in mind. But the director was not surprised when Cruise, who had starred in Reiner's 'A Few Good Men', passed on another courtroom drama. He then turned to Baldwin.

"Alec is one of the best actors in America, and I know a side of him that a lot of people don't see at the movies when he's playing the hard, dark, edgy types he's become known for," Reiner says. "I see an extremely likable guy who's extremely intelligent. He is also capable of playing these warm characters."

Reiner had plenty of occasion to get to know him before casting the movie, which co-stars Whoopi Goldberg and James Woods. Baldwin, disenchanted with many of his recent projects, inked his own development deal with Castle Rock Entertainment, Reiner's production company.

Although Reiner has encouraged him to try his hand at directing, Baldwin maintains, "I don't like movie-making enough" - the cameras, lenses, dollies and such - to direct.

His expertise, he says, is in "defining the sensation I want to create in the audience," making him more suited to the producer's job of hiring and firing the people who can bring that vision to light.

He brags that he can sniff out a bomb while still shooting it. Take, for example, 'The Juror', the Demi Moore vehicle that didn't come close to meeting box-office expectations. Baldwin says an unprovocative script made the project a gamble from the start, but he took the part because he thought the combined clout of Moore and producer Irwin Winkler made for good odds.

But don't expect him to shoulder any of the blame for 'The Shadow', 'Heavens's Prisoners' or any of his other flops. ("I see some of my movies come out," he admits, "and I say, 'I wouldn't go see that.' ") Instead, he rails against the suits - his feud with Disney executives over 'The Marrying Man' haunted his career for years - and "novice directors." There are people who run the business, who make all the decisions," he says flatly. "When things don't go well, it's their fault."

While he admits he is not exactly docile on movie sets, he defends his behavior - as well as that of other actors labeled difficult - as valid. "Nine times out of 10 - and it's vital you get this idea right - those difficulties are genuine creative difficulties", he claims. "One of 10 - or one of 20 - some - one's really an asshole. There are actors and actresses who are incredibly spoiled little pigs."

But 'Bookworm', he points out, is his 19^th movie, while most of his directors have made two or three. "Let's face it, most of the movies I make, I know more about movies than the people I'm working with. So many directors today are paralyzed to make a decision, so their movies are big bowls of oatmeal."

Working under the direction of Reiner on 'Ghosts of Mississippi' was a welcome departure, "Rob is smart," Baldwin says. "Rob is clear. Rob is decisive. He's focused. He's polite. But ultimately he knows what he wants to do - he's self-reliant, which is rare in film- making today. Rob trusts Rob."

That skill, he claims, is more important to him than Reiner's impressive record of hits, including 'When Harry Met Sally' and 'The American President'. Besides, he says, since the birth of his daughter, Ireland Eliesse, a year ago October, "All ambition went right out of me." Asked why he continues to work at all, he responds, "I have to make money. I have a kid. "I am so in love with my kid I can't even tell you," Baldwin gushes, proudly sharing a picture in which Addie, as Alec and his wife, Kim Basinger, call her, is the spitting image of her mother. "I keep forgetting billions of people have had this sensation. This girl, she got on the phone with me and said, 'Da Da Da.' " Other than several weekend visits, the family has been apart for a few months while Baldwin has been filming Bookworm in Alberta, Canada. After the movie wraps, they plan to stop dividing their time between New York and Los Angeles, as they have been doing for several years, and move to New York full-time. Baldwin and Basinger have been together almost seven years - since they made 'The Marrying Man' - and he says each has changed the other for the better. They are co-hosting this year's People for the Ethical Treat- ment of Animals gala, a responsibility Baldwin claims his wife never would have considered in the past because of shyness. He, on the other hand, has never been afraid to voice his political beliefs, whether about animal rights - "Fifth Avenue at Christmas time, if you had a can of spray paint, you'd be mighty tempted" - or Newt Gingrich - "You colandre thought the whole country [in 1994] was going to start goosestepping down the street with this guy."

He still stumps for Democrats, but his desire for a private family life has convinced him to ditch the idea of run- ning for office himself. "On the most cynical level, it's another public life," he says, "and there's no money in it. "I used to want to be president," he adds. "Now I want to make my daughter pancakes."

In an industry in which high-powered couplings ignite and explode with equal speed, Baldwin and Basinger have stuck it out through some tough times and against all expectations. He stayed by her side through a costly and embarrassing legal battle in which the producers of 'Boxing Helena' successfully sued her for backing out of the project. The case soured Baldwin, who once planned to go to law school, on the legal profession.

Since then, he has suffered his own courtroom ordeal. He was tried and asquitted last March of misdemeanor battery charges stemming from an altercation with a photographer who was trying to videotape the couple's homecoming with the newborn Addie.

"I've never had a member of the legitimate press follow me home," he says. "It was upsetting because my wife and I live in an area of L.A. that is a very residential, very middle-class neighborhood. You'd never suspect we live there, which is why we live there."

Facing a civil trial next fall, Baldwin declines to talk about the case in depth. He does maintain, however, that he tried to slap the camera away with his open hand because he thought the paparazzo was going to strike him with it."If I'd had a closed fist," he boasts between puffs on a thin Cuban cigar, "the guy would have been unconscious."

Fed up with the courts - and with lawyers' fees - he also recently settled a contract dispute with Morgan Creek Productions. In a case reminiscent of his wife's, Baldwin had agreed to make for Incognito the company but first delayed the project, which required a European shoot, and then pulled out altogether because of his new family. He also didn't want to work with director Peter Weller, whom he calls inexperienced. When Morgan Creek threatened to sue him for reneging, Baldwin paid up, though he declines to name the price.

Filming on Incognito wrapped this fall with Jason Patrie in the lead role, but, Baldwin says with undisguised pleasure,"P.S., they fired Weller." Morgan Creek, which declined to discuss the Baldwin conflict, replaced Weller coner with veteran director John Badham.

It should come as no surprise, then, that two-thirds of the way through the Bookworm shoot, Baldwin is disgruntled with Twentieth Century Fox. " They live by the harassment code of movie-making," he gripes, complaining that the studio is constantly threatening to pull pages from the script because the movie is behind schedule.

He took the part of a fashion photographer in Bookworm, he says, because of David Mamet and Anthony Hopkins. Mamet, whom he calls "one of the most brilliant men alive today," wrote the screenplay, while

Hopkins, "the greatest living, working actor," signed on to star.

While he expected Hopkins to be all about "ability and acting technique," the truth is, Baldwin says after working with him for two months, "he's a movie star. He has that face. It is so luminous. His eyes are so piercing. Tony wouldn't have to do anything - his face is so compelling."

Once again, Baldwin is stuck playing the bad guy. Hopkins gets to be the good guy, a wealthy intellectual who, stranded with Baldwin in the wilds of Alaska after their plane crashes, begins to suspect the younger man is having an affair with his much younger wife, Elle Macpherson.

For a few days of the shoot, Baldwin finds himself in a place ominously known as Deadman's Flats. Signs along Highway 1 on the drive west from Calgary into the mountains warn of wind gusts and elk crossings, but it is a beautiful autumn day, with the sun filtering through the dense trees to warm the chilled air. He was supposed to have the day off, but he has been called to the set to shoot part of an action sequence involving a fight with a bear.

Of course, he explains, he will not actually have to interact with the bear. They will never even have to be in the same camera shot. But when Baldwin returns to the set moments later, there- waiting closeup - is Bart, a 1,500-pound Kodiak. Two knee-high, mildly electrified wires are the only things separating him from dozens of crew members - and Baldwin. The actor holds tight to his only weapon, a makeshift spear, and manages to look scared.. In take after take, Bart obeys, more or less, the hand and voice commands from his trainer. At "cut," Baldwin thumps his hand to his chest and laughs that finding his motivation for the scene wasn't all that hard.

His demeanor on the set is laid-back, as he chats easily with the crew, takes calls on his cell-phone and flirts playfully with a pretty visitor, hugging her tightly in front of her boyfriend, Harold Perrineau, who plays his assistant in the movie.

Alec is indeed a Baldwin.

At 38, he is the oldest - and the most accomplished - of the four acting Baldwin brothers, sons of a Long Island high-school civics teacher. The brothers - Daniel, William and Stephen - are competitive. Without much enthusiasm, Baldwin offers his pat quip that women approach him only to ask him to pass their phone numbers on to Billy.

"I completely understand that Billy is a younger, thinner, better -looking version of me," he says.

As for his own matinee-idol looks, Baldwin maintains he doesn't give them much thought - except in terms of aging. He jokes that when he hits 40, he will undergo a "face lift, chin implant, whatever it takes."

If anything, he has a reputation for letting himself go, and he owns up to puffing up between projects. But he adds, "In the end, people hire me for what I can do - which is give some dramatic oomph to a role."

About two months into the 'Bookworm' shoot, the actor is looking fit. At six feet, he is taller than most male movie stars, and his appearance is solid, not flabby. Although this movie is a physically demanding one and he is doing some of his own stunts - a few days earlier he crossed a waterfall on a log - he did not undergo a special training regimen. To keep in shape, he has been running on a treadmill in his rented house every morning. He sticks to a vegetarian diet, but he still loves food, munching on microwave popcorn and waxing on about one of his favorite recipes - popcorn sprinkled with soy sauce and Parmigiano-Reggiano.

He hasn't settled on his next project, but he has several options. According to Reiner, 'Second Nature', a science-fiction thriller starring and produced by Baldwin, is in the final stages of development at Castle Rock. He's also toying with returning to TV, where he had his start on the soaps 'The Doctors and 'Knot's Landing.' "I've made enough movies that don't get seen by many people," he says.

Broadway, though, probably still holds the greatest allure. In what may have been the most critical decision of his career, Baldwin balked at 'Patriot Games', the sequel to the blockbuster 'The Hunt for Red October', so that he could star in a 1992 Broadway production of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. He snagged a Tony nomination, but his film career stalled. "If I subtracted economics from the equation - not thinking about money or movie stardom - I don't think there was much choice between 'Patriot Games' and 'Streetcar'," he says.

He claims his only regret is his fondness for Tom Clancy and for the characterization of the hero, Jack Ryan, as a boy who goes out to sea and comes back a man. "Before he was taken over by what's- his-name, who's considerably older than me," he says.

He is not being nasty. Alec Baldwin really cannot come up with the name of Harrison Ford, one of the biggest box- office stars of all time, who also happens to have appeared with him in 'Working Girl' and, briefly, in 'Ghosts of Mississippi'.

"Why am I blanking out?" Baldwin wonders. "What's his name?"

And as every movie star knows, the worst thing that can be said "Who?" But that prospect doesn't appear to worry Baldwin, who insists that setbacks like 'Patriot Games', 'The Juror' or 'Incognito' are not much cause for depression. "I continue to work and get offered good movies," he says, "and make a lot of money."