Tuesday, May 27, 1997By LOUIS B. HOBSON --

NEW YORK -- Ving Rhames is one bad dude.

That's bad as in cool.

Rhames is the imposing actor who played the crime boss in Pulp Fiction, Demi Moore's self-appointed bodyguard in Striptease, Tom Cruise's partner in Mission Impossible and the heroic stranger in John Singleton's drama Rosewood.

In the action drama Con Air, that opens June 6, Rhames plays lifer Diamond Dog. He and a dozen other maximum security prisoners hijack a plane which is taking them to a new prison.

"Basically it's a $70-million roller-coaster ride. It's mindless acting but I wanted to work with John Malkovich. He's one of the best actors in the business," explains Rhames. "Now that I have a little clout, it's not the kind of role I seek out unless I'm between projects."

Rhames, 36, was raised in Harlem.

"We grew up very poor. There was usually just my mother and my brother Junior. My dad would come and go so it was up to my mom to provide for us."

Rhames sought out acting to help him deal with the anger and tension created by such an upbringing.

"I kept getting scholarships to drama schools and barely a week after I graduated (from Juilliard Drama School) in 1983, I got a job in that season's Shakespeare In The Park.

"I've worked ever since."

Rhames worked successfully but unnoticed until Pulp Fiction.

"Before Pulp Fiction, I couldn't go into a department store in New York without a security guard following me around.

"Now, people follow me around to get my autograph. I got incredible notoriety from that one movie. People think I'm cool because that's what the character was."

Rhames says that in order to make Pulp Fiction on a $10-million budget, Quentin Tarantino offered each of the major actors one point of the film's gross.

"The movie has made more than $300-million, so each of is owed about $1-million. John Travolta, Sam Jackson and I have hired a lawyer to audit (Miramax) studios."

Rhames feels he finally crossed Hollywood's color barrier when he signed last month to star opposite George Clooney and Danny DeVito in Out of Sight.

"The role was written for a blond, blue-eyed guy. The fact they even let me read for it was astonishing. The fact I got it proves that for me at least things are changing in Hollywood."

In 1994, Rhames married Valerie Scott, a Warner Bros. publicist. The couple now lives in Santa Monica.


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