Caruso Charisma Former ‘Nypd Blue’ Heartthrob Ventures Onto Big Screen In ‘Kiss Of Death,’ Hoping His TV Charisma Carries Over To Movies

This is a test.

Although he’s doing his best to act cool and unconcerned, you can tell that David Caruso knows it.

“Kiss of Death,” the soulful redhead’s first stab at feature-film stardom, opens Friday. Such things are moments of truth for any popular television actor who wants to see if his or her appeal extends beyond the small screen’s confines. This movie’s reception will be a more crucial test for Caruso than it is for most, though, seeing as how he is no longer a popular television star.

Or, maybe, not very popular at all anymore.

“I try not to get real hooked on my future, on how people are going to respond to my next job,” says Caruso, a skinny, plain-speaking 39-year-old who grew up in a semi-tough section of Queens.

“It’s dangerous to start investing too heavily in such a precarious profession. You just have no idea what’s going to be popular and what they’re going to respond to. And the viewers have power, in terms of whether they want to see you again.”

As most everyone knows, the response to Caruso’s portrayal of “NYPD Blue’s” sensitive, brooding Det. John Kelly was phenomenal. The first actor to drop his drawers with some regularity on network television, Caruso became an instant heartthrob when the show debuted two seasons ago. Which was somewhat ironic, since he’d spent the previous 14 years stuck in third- and fourth-banana movie roles (“An Officer and a Gentleman,” “Mad Dog and Glory”) because casting agents didn’t think he looked like a guy who’d get the girl.

All that changed when “Blue” made Caruso the most talked-about star on television. Before the first season was completed, he signed a $1 million deal to headline “Kiss of Death” - a loose remake of the 1947 film noir costarring Nicolas Cage, Samuel L. Jackson and Helen Hunt - during last year’s summer hiatus.

Which was fine, if fatiguing. Caruso had only one week off work at either end of his summer vacation. But the bigger problem was that director William Friedkin, whose Oscar-winning “The French Connection” was one of the teen-age Caruso’s favorite films, wanted the actor to star in “Jade,” an erotic thriller written by the dean of such things, Joe Eszterhas (“Basic Instinct,” “Jagged Edge”), and costarring such hot properties as “The Last Seduction” star Linda Fiorentino and “Bullets Over Broadway” Oscar-nominated Chazz Palminteri.

The fall-winter shooting schedule for “Jade” conflicted with that of the series’ second season. Caruso now claims that he’d hoped the show’s producers, Steven Bochco and David Milch, could somehow accommodate his desire to make “Jade.” But when his contract was being renegotiated last summer, it was widely reported that Caruso’s representatives were making outrageous demands, evidently in hopes of getting him sprung loose from “NYPD Blue” altogether so he could pursue his real interest, the movies.

Whether that’s what Caruso intended or not, his character was written out of the show early in its second season, Bochco’s old “L.A. Law” mainstay Jimmy Smits replaced Caruso and frumpy costar Dennis Franz, of all people, became television’s new sex god.

Caruso feels he was unfairly characterized as the villain of this whole mess, which left a large segment of the “Blue” audience with a seething sense of betrayal. That disaffection surely wasn’t helped when Caruso’s relationship with his girlfriend of four years, Paris Papiro, hit the rocks and went to palimony court. (A twice-divorced father of one, Caruso has been dating flight attendant Margaret Buckley since last fall.)

Through it all, Caruso kept quiet and concentrated on filming “Jade.” Now, however, he’s ready to tell his side of the “NYPD Blue” to-do.

“People seem to respond to the course of events like there was some kind of betrayal,” he acknowledges. “If I could just be clear: It was not my choice to leave the show. I would be working on the show now if it were up to me. But I could not walk away from, or discount, the opportunities that I was getting. I was hoping that we could work out some kind of flexible schedule for the show. You know, for ‘NYPD Blue’ they shoot a lot of stuff in advance.”

“Kiss of Death” is a strippeddown, realistically filmed crime drama, in which Caruso plays a family-loving petty criminal, Jimmy Kilmartin, whose strong desire to go straight is thwarted with disastrous personal results. Squeezed between an ambitious district attorney (Stanley Tucci) and the psychotic leader of a car-theft ring (Cage), Kilmartin has to think fast to save himself and what’s left of his family from certain destruction.

Caruso hopes that those who see “Kiss of Death” will appreciate the fact that he’s trying to give them a little more than what they saw on “Blue.”

While he seemed determined to explore his acting skills to their limit, David Caruso claims the upcoming test of his star power is, at most, a secondary concern.

“I’m trying not to over-analyze that part of it,” he says. “All I’ve ever wanted were the opportunities. I was never looking for a guarantee. I never said, ‘I want to be a movie star and be successful or I don’t want it.’ All you can ever ask for is your turn at bat. That’s what you prepare for.”