SHOOTING STARS : Corey Haim Uses ‘License’ to Set Sights on James Dean

It’s tough not to be at least a little cynical when a 16-year-old teen idol, his mother in tow, strolls into his publicist’s office for an interview and proceeds to unabashedly model the black, metal-studded, $2,000 leather jacket he had just purchased to wear to the premiere of his new movie later that evening.

“I think I first realized I wanted to be an actor when I was this little kid, 11 years old, at the audition for my first movie thinking about how great it would be to have all the money in the world and limousines and be living in a big house in the Hollywood hills,” said Corey Haim, star of the current “License to Drive.”

“But it’s not like that. It’s work,” he added, after ripping the price tags off the rest of his attire for the big night ahead.

At an age when many teen-agers are settling into their first jobs, Haim, 16, has already had a career. Since debuting in “First Born” in 1984, he has appeared in 10 films, including “Lucas,” “Murphy’s Romance,” “The Lost Boys” and the upcoming “Dream a Little Dream.”

Still, even with all the money, the cover photos on teen magazines and thousands of adoring letters from love-sick girls, Haim insisted he’s just a regular kid who stays home for fun, plays sports and watches TV.

But while many 16-year-old boys have posters of James Dean plastered on their bedroom walls, Haim actually believes he is the next James Dean.

“I know I can do it,” Haim said. “Dean made only three movies and he’s such a legend. People think he’s so brilliant. He was so raw. He did such weird things. I mean the way he died in that little sports car, it’s such a freaky thing to me.”

Haim says that people, including his mother, often tell him he looks like Dean. But besides that, it’s difficult to pin Haim down about why he idolizes the enigmatic actor.

While he is more cocky, more self-assured and better-looking than most teen-age boys, Haim does not appear at all surly, brooding or Angst -ridden like Dean. He admits to being a bit afraid of the future, a bit anxious about what his career and his life will be like at 24 or 34 or even, gasp, 50. He may even share the normal adolescent fascination with racing 150 m.p.h. in a brand-new Porsche.

But he doesn’t have a death wish. With his natural brown hair dyed black and his pretty-boy face, he is a model of the clean-cut kid--a far cry from a rebel-without-a-cause symbol of tormented youth.

But that’s just the way Haim wants it. It’s important, he said, to be a good, clean-cut role model, “clean cut meaning being polite and mature and not smoking, not drinking, not taking drugs.

“Maybe I don’t have that total rebel image,” he said. “I just want to be known like (Dean) was known. I just want people to think that I’m really, really good.”

“He’s a natural,” said Greg Beeman, the 26-year-old rookie director of “License to Drive,” a film that did not receive a warm reception from critics. “Haim can make really outrageous scenes seem believable. He almost makes it look too easy.

“Sometimes I felt like a schoolteacher. I mean trying to get him in front of the camera was like trying to get him to math class. But once he’s there, he’s as good and as professional as anybody.”

In “License to Drive,” Haim plays a likable teen who tries and fails to get his driver’s license, but at the urging of his license-less friends and to impress his gorgeous dream date, nevertheless steals the family car for a night of high-speed driving that would make Mario Andretti proud.

Haim, who grew up in Toronto and moved to Los Angeles two years ago, did most of his own driving in the movie--in front of the film’s police escorts--and, though he has his own car, he still doesn’t have a license.

“They could have called it ‘No License to Drive,’ ” Haim joked. “I hit my marks real good in cars, I think, because I was afraid to miss it and then have people laugh because I didn’t have my license.”