Searching For A Starring Role -- Elisabeth Shue Has Yet Another Girlfriend Role In `Heart And Souls,' But Such Typecasting Hasn't Hampered Her Drive For Professional Fulfillment

She was Tom Cruise's girlfriend in "Cocktail" and Michael J. Fox's companion in "Back to the Future, II and III." She made her big-screen debut nine years ago as Ralph Macchio's girlfriend in "The Karate Kid."

This week Elisabeth Shue is Robert Downey Jr.'s on-again, off-again girlfriend in "Heart and Souls," a comedy-fantasy that opens tomorrow and is being promoted by Universal Pictures as the sleeper of late summer. Again, she's not exactly at the center of the story, though she's allowed to demonstrate some independence.

"After `Cocktail,' I'd made a conscious decision to eliminate the girlfriend roles from my future," said Shue during a Seattle visit. "But this character really was in charge. She was aggressive in the relationship. She knew what she wanted, and I wanted to make sure the character stayed strong."

Shue was also impressed with the script for "Heart and Souls," in which Downey plays a San Francisco yuppie who is looked after by four guardian angels (Alfre Woodard, Kyra Sedgwick, Charles Grodin, Tom Sizemore). She had auditioned for Sedgwick's part but accepted the lesser role because the script had "more depth" than anything she'd been handed in years.

"In most of the stuff I read, the girlfriend has to be everything to everyone. These roles are so one-dimensional that when you keep getting them you start to wonder, `Maybe this is all I'm capable of.' In your first minute on-screen, you have to show that

everything's just fine with your character.

"But as my acting coach, Roy London, says, the only interesting characters are the ones who go through change, who aren't the same at the end of the story as they are at the beginning."

All the scripts worth doing, she said, are also being read by other actresses. And they usually have Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Christian Slater or other male stars already attached to them. Rarely is a woman cast first.

Following her goals

Like many Hollywood actresses typed as starlets, Shue has gone elsewhere to find professional fulfillment. She's set to play a character going through a nervous breakdown in an Off Broadway play, "Bang," that opens in October, and she's completed a couple of low-budget independent movies.

"This frees me to follow my goals," she said.

Before shooting "Heart and Souls," she appeared in an independent film, "Twenty Bucks," cast as "a woman with no boyfriend who's more rebellious than anyone I've played before." Although it turned up at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, it's in distribution limbo.

During a break in the production of "Heart and Souls," she made another low-budget movie, "Radio Inside," co-starring William McNamara and Dylan Walsh as brothers competing for her (MGM has the movie but hasn't decided what to do with it). Once more, she plays an independent woman.

In today's blockbuster-driven market, she's concerned about whether they'll ever be released.

"It's difficult for movies that slowly go their own way," she said. "When `The Karate Kid' came out, I didn't even know it had made $100 million until a year later. Now every newspaper tells you about the weekend grosses. It's like a horse race."

Born in Wilmington, Del., Shue grew up in New Jersey and went to Wellesley College and Harvard while dabbling in show business. She made her Broadway debut in "Some Americans Abroad" at Lincoln Center, and had her fattest film role to date as the blues-singing teenager who dominates Disney's 1987 comedy "Adventures in Babysitting."

Deciding on acting

"I once wanted to be a lawyer," she said. "But I did a lot of commercials in high school, and I had such instant success that I think that pushed me toward acting. My first real acting job was playing Craig T. Nelson's daughter in `Call to Glory' - another lucky break - and I think right after that series ended, I had decided on acting."

She looks back on "Adventures in Babysitting" as her career high point, and she's delighted that kids recognize her from watching it on video.

"I didn't realize what a rare role it was at the time," she said. "It was Chris Columbus' first directing job (he went on to do the "Home Alone" movies), most of the kids were getting their first breaks, and there was an innocence about it.

"I may never get to carry a movie like that again."