DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710240146

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E14  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   77 lines

ALLEN ENDURES '70S MORES IN ``ICE''

FOR A WOMAN who has been married to both Richard Nixon and a man accused of being a witch, Joan Allen looks remarkably happy.

Wearing tight jeans and a big smile, she resembles a ballerina - ultra-thin and aristocratic. She is arguably the whitest woman in the Western world, next to Helena Bonham Carter. She looks as if the sun has never hit her.

In her latest film, the critically acclaimed ``The Ice Storm,'' which opens Friday, she again plays a wife who has a lot to bear. Her husband (Kevin Kline) is having a tawdry affair with the woman next door (Sigourney Weaver). Although she's fed up with the entire marriage, she pretends that she doesn't know about his dalliance.

The film is a chronicle of its time - November 1973. Her character has been reading ``Jonathan Livingston Seagull'' and ``Human Sexual Response.'' Watergate has caught up with Richard Nixon. The Beatles are in vogue. The local suburb-neighbors are planning a ``key party'' that will promote wife-swapping. Values are changing. The era of ``free'' and ``cool'' is approaching.

For Allen, the role of Elena Hood is likely to net a third consecutive Academy Award nomination. She's been in the running the past two years for playing Pat Nixon in ``Nixon'' and for the cold, stern Elizabeth Proctor in the movie version of Arthur Miller's ``The Crucible.'' Both were sad wives, and now comes Elena Hood, perhaps the saddest, and surely the most subtle, of the three.

``I'm playing thoughts in `The Ice Storm,' '' Allen said. ``The words are not always there - just the thoughts. You have to wonder if the audience is going to be able to see what this woman is thinking. How fast does a thought move?''

Although Elena is a subtle woman who rages inside rather than on the surface, the Oscar oddsmakers already figure that Allen has an edge this time. ``Maybe I should play an evil woman next time - something entirely different,'' she said. ``People are beginning to tell me they feel sorry for me - people I don't even know.'' In her next film, though, sheagain plays a wife. It's ``Pleasantville,'' with Jeff Daniels.

People seldom recognize her on the street, although, she says, ``Lately I've had a number of high school kids who yell, `There's Elizabeth Proctor.' They have to read `The Crucible' in school and, suddenly, I'm famous for that role. I think it's because they skipped reading it to see the movie.''

As for the the Oscars, she reasons, ``It's not like getting up to bat and striking out. Just getting up to bat at all is great.''

Stage, not film, was her origin. She grew up in Rochelle, Ill., and was a theater major at Eastern Illinois University, where she met John Malkovich and became involved with the Steppenwolf theater in Chicago. Broadway was a natural progression. She earned a Tony nomination for ``The Heidi Chronicles'' and won the award for ``Burn This!'' The movies were another natural progression.

She doesn't describe herself as a method actress but admits that ``on the set, I get very quiet and thoughtful. Kevin, on the other hand, can walk right into a scene. I have to work into the mood.''

She sees Ang Lee, the director of ``The Ice Storm,'' as ``the kind of director who is very specific about what he wants. He can see the scene in his mind.''

Allen reasons that the setting, New Canaan, Conn., in 1973, ``was a time when people were coming out of a repression. There had been the Beat Generation. The rules were changing so much. It was supposed to be enlightened to swap wives and do things like that, but people didn't really want to do it. To research my role, I looked at movies like `Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice' and `Diary of a Mad Housewife' and reread `The Feminine Mystique.' ''

As for her own memories of the 1970s, she looks almost embarrassed in saying, ``I was a good girl. I didn't have my first alcoholic drink until I was 19. I think that what the film is saying is that people still wanted to be good, but the new social order wanted them to be bad. There's an irony.''

Still theater-oriented, she lives in New York City with her husand and 3-year-old, Sadie. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

FOX SEARCHLIGHT

Joan Allen... KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MOVIES

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