RODERICK MANN : DANIELS: ‘WANTED’ COMEDIAN FOUND

“This is the guy everyone has been looking for; the guy who can do light comedy.”

That’s Woody Allen talking, and the “guy” he’s referring to is handsome, 30-year-old Jeff Daniels, who performs so splendidly in Allen’s new movie, “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” playing an actor who suddenly steps off the screen and starts talking to screen-struck Mia Farrow.

“Faultlessly funny,” said Newsweek of his performance. Other critics agree. “A throwback to the days of real Hollywood heroes,” wrote one. For an actor who had made only two movies until now, this is understandably encouraging.

His tiny role as a policeman in Milos Forman’s “Ragtime” passed without notice. And as Debra Winger’s faithless husband in “Terms of Endearment” he was bound to be overshadowed by Winger, Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson--and was.

But in “Purple Rose of Cairo” he comes into his own. And he landed the role only by chance.

Michael Keaton, Allen’s first choice for the part, bowed out “by mutual agreement” after two days of shooting. Allen then tested several other actors before his casting director Juliet Taylor (who had also worked on “Terms of Endearment”) urged him: “Take a look at Jeff Daniels.” Allen did. And that was that.

“What was interesting about working with Woody was that there was no small talk at all,” Daniels said the other day. “I don’t suppose we spoke about more than three things apart from the film during the 3 1/2 months we were together.

“That was all right; I wasn’t that comfortable talking with him anyway--awe, I suppose. He wasn’t the kind of person I felt I wanted to go out and have beers with afterward. But by the time the movie was finished, I did feel more at ease with him. He’s very unassuming for a man who has been called a genius.”

Although Daniels’ background is the theater--he started with the Circle Repertory in New York--he now wants to concentrate on movies. And since completing “Purple Rose,” he has made another--”Marie,” with Sissy Spacek.

He likes films. Certainly he finds them easier than his first Broadway play, “Fifth of July,” which in one scene required him to carry his crippled friend up a flight of stairs. Since the friend was played by Christopher Reeve, who weighs in at 225 pounds, it wasn’t easy.

“I pumped iron for two months to get in shape,” Daniels said, “and I carried Chris for the first and last time at the final dress rehearsal--it was like lifting a building. After that, they decided to cut the scene. I was told, ‘Everyone in the audience is going to ask “What’s the name of the kid carrying Superman up the stairs?” ’ “

NEW VENTURE: Melissa Gilbert, who for nearly 10 years labored in the TV salt mines making “Little House on the Prairie,” finally gets her movie break, starring in “Sylvester” (opening March 15).

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” the 20-year-old actress said last week. “Remember, I’ve actually been working since I was 2 (when she did TV commercials). So it’s more than 18 years.

“This is a big step for me. There’s a tendency for people to think TV performers are not as good as movie actors; I want to prove they are. But I think a lot of people liked “Little House.” Even Steven Spielberg admitted to me that he’d once watched it.”

She is pleased with the movie, which is about an orphaned 16-year-old girl struggling to become a horse trainer and raise two little brothers at the same time.

Her horse in the movie is called Sylvester Stallone--”because he looks like the actor,” she said.

“We had to get Stallone to sign a release,” she added. “We were allowed to say his name just seven times in the film.”

Just two days before the movie opens, Gilbert will get a star on Hollywood Boulevard.

“My father (the late actor Paul Gilbert) already has one there,” she said, “and I’d like to have had mine near his, but that’s not possible. Still, just having it is enough. It’s the last real symbol of old Hollywood that’s left.”

QUICK WORK: Anyone who has just labored long and hard polishing a screenplay had better not read on. But the fact is that 42-year-old director Werner Herzog, whose latest film, “Where the Green Ants Dream,” has just opened in the United States, claims to have written it “in a weekend or so.”

“I never take more than four or five days to write my screenplays,” he says. “But I only start to write them when I see the movie in front of my eyes as clearly as you see it in the screening room.”

HONEST: Now here’s an intriguing quote from Angie Dickinson in a New York interview: “I regret only three one-night stands in my life. No, make that four. . . .”