GENERATION X-CELLENT

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

It is the year 2025 at a prestigious Eastern-seaboard college. A professor of American studies is addressing the packed class for his course "From Wham! to Pearl Jam: Aesthetic Shifts in Late 20th Century Popular Culture." The 1990s were a Golden Age in the history of American tastes, he argues, a decade of pared-down chic superior to the one that preceded it. To bolster his thesis, he cites the rise of poignant alternative music, the popularity of earth-toned packaging and the disappearance of clothing with shoulder pads. His students are unconvinced. What was so great, they shout, about an era that gave us Robert James Waller and the Ricki Lake show? Ah, the professor replies sagely, but during the '90s one could attend a movie safely knowing that it would not star Judd Nelson.

If the current decade really will be venerated by future chroniclers of pop culture, it may well be because the '90s have produced an appealing stable of new actors who stand in smart contrast to the so-called Brat Pack of the '80s, the cliquish band of young stars that included Nelson, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy and various sons of Martin Sheen. The '90s newcomers also provide a downtown alternative to married-with-children superstars like Demi Moore or Tom Cruise. Brad Pitt, Ethan Hawke, Winona Ryder, Uma Thurman and a handful of others, all in their 20s and early 30s, share soulful good looks, unconventional style and a refreshing seriousness about their craft. They typically work with edgy directors in an impressive variety of roles. On screen and off, they convey a beguiling intensity and even a fondness for books. They are a fine lager next to the Brat Pack's Bud Lite.

Consider the group's recent successes. Pitt has gained star status since his leading role as a wild-hearted rancher in Legends of the Fall, the country's No. 1 box-office hit for four weeks this winter. Ethereal beauties Ryder and Thurman earned Oscar nominations last week- Ryder for her role as Jo in Gillian Armstrong's Little Women and Thurman for her portrayal of a heroin-sniffing Mob wife in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Hawke has been winning rave reviews for his role as a charmingly scruffy, Auden-quoting romantic in Before Sunrise. In the meantime, Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore (the former E.T. child star and teenage drug abuser who has matured into a confident young actress) have garnered praise for their performances in the current girl-bonding hit Boys on the Side. Critics have also been smitten by that other winsome (albeit unrelated) Parker, Sarah Jessica, who plays a witty copywriter and commitment-phobe in Miami Rhapsody.

According to Richard Linklater, director of Before Sunrise and 1991's Slacker, there has been a "qualitative increase in talent" among young actors of late. Yet he cautions, "It's the movies that define them. Who would James Dean have been if he didn't make East of Eden or Rebel Without a Cause? You're always a product of your time." And that is perhaps why last year's postgraduate romantic comedy Reality Bites made fashionable generational icons out of Hawke and co-star Ryder, while the identically themed 1986 film St. Elmo's Fire made quick camp figures out of several Brat Packers. Both movies are about a close circle of 22-year-olds trying to fall in love. But St. Elmo's Fire depicts a world of cheap sex and tacky apartments, made worse by the presence of Emilio Estevez in a bow tie. Reality Bites, by contrast, offers up Hawke and Ryder as artistes and tentative lovers bedecked in oversize thrift-store garb.

If today's alterna-stars seem infinitely cooler than their predecessors, it is in part because they are choosier about the roles they accept. It would be hard to imagine Hawke appearing in the equivalent of Charlie Sheen's 1990 trash- collection farce, Men at Work. "People my age have an earnestness, a desire to do good work," says Mary-Louise Parker, who appeared in Woody Allen's multiple-Oscar-nominated Bullets over Broadway. "There seem to be more people who want to do something worthwhile and different and provocative."

Unlike the Brat Pack, the new group is venturing far beyond movies about youth angst. "People like me and Brad Pitt and others are making completely different kinds of movies," says Thurman. "There's not one genre of films in which we are working. When the Brat Pack happened, there was a certain kind of movie-Sixteen Candles, Weird Science. The same people always worked together, and it was practically a cottage industry." Significantly, Pitt's and Ryder's current releases are period films. Keanu Reeves, who starred in last summer's hit, Speed, appeared in Kenneth Branagh's film version of Much Ado About Nothing; more recently Reeves played Hamlet onstage in Canada. Leonardo DiCaprio, first noticed for his portrayal of a retarded boy in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, stars as junkie poet Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries, set for release in April, and is shooting a film in which he plays Arthur Rimbaud, the gay 19th century French poet.

NEVERTHELESS, BOTH DICAPRIO and Hawke lament the lack of roles that meet their evolved standards. "I don't want to wake up in the morning and be bothered by a role I've chosen," says DiCaprio, 20. "It's almost like scripts are repeating themselves. The ratio of bad ones to good ones is 50 to 1." Hawke, who admires Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Robert Redford for "maintaining a level of integrity for over 25 years in this business," concurs: "There's a real void of auteur filmmakers right now; of people who are interested in telling a story they want to tell, not just in telling a story they think other people want to hear. I'd like there to be better films."

Idealism seems to run in the blood of Hollywood's new junior class, several of whom grew up in counterculture families. Thurman's mother was once married to Timothy Leary-who is also, coincidentally, Ryder's godfather. Thurman's father is a highly regarded scholar of Buddhism. Charles Bukowski was a frequent houseguest at the DiCaprios' when Leonardo was growing up in Los Angeles. The actor's best childhood friend was Abbie Hoffman's son. And Sarah Jessica Parker grew up idolizing Cesar Chavez and attending peace marches with her parents.

Even today the interests of this new wave of stars seem to extend beyond the Hollywood club scene. Hawke and Sarah Jessica Parker live quiet lives in Manhattan, where they are involved in theater and claim not to socialize much with other actors. Two years ago, Hawke started his own theater company, where he presides as artistic director. Ryder collects rare books and owns an edition of James Joyce's Ulysses that features original drawings by Matisse. She is also a fan of the obscure, critically lauded Italian-American novelist John Fante.

But despite their urbanity, these actors and actresses have an appealingly childlike quality. Pitt is the sort of free spirit who might woo a girl by popping wheelies in a parking lot. Hawke would be more likely to take her to his dorm room and show off his John Coltrane collection. Rather than overt sex appeal, actresses like Marisa Tomei and the Parkers project the flustered insouciance of college coeds. They are the smart, pretty girls on campus who keep losing their library cards. Declares Thurman: "I am completely a goofball nerd."

If the new kids have successfully styled themselves away from comparisons to the Brat Pack, they have also distinguished themselves from prior generations of movie stars. They don't have the smoldering rebelliousness of '50s stars like Brando, Clift and Dean. Nor are they throwbacks to the glamorous Hollywood stars of the '30s and '40s. What this generation has done is create its own kind of understated, unaffected sophistication-Bette Davis and Cary Grant in mussed bobs and basketball sneakers. These actors have nothing against grownups; they're just not ready to be them.

--Reported by Patrick E. Cole and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and Georgia Harbison/New York

With reporting by PATRICK E. COLE AND JEFFREY RESSNER/LOS ANGELES AND GEORGIA HARBISON/NEW YORK