By Justine Elias

For the actor Will Patton, it's the end of the World. Again. In the course of some 30 films, he has endured postapocalyptic mail carriers, squishy parasites from outer space, and the wrath of God. So this weekends scourge- an asteroid the size of Texas, headed straight for Earth- should be no trouble.

Patton is appearing in "Armageddon", which hit theaters Wednesday. It stars Bruce Willis and is the summer's second doomsday movie following "Deep Impact". Though audiences may be drawn most to the film's fiery special effects, Patton's supporting performance is likely to bring more attention to his idiosyncratic career, which has encompassed off broadway plays, art films; obscure SCI-FI movies, and surprise commercial hits.

He may be best known as the scheming Pentagon official in "No Way Out", the 1087 Political thriller staring Kevin Costner, and as the sinister police officer in "The Client" who tells an 11-year old boy that the FBI has " special little kid sized electric chair".

Making a connection

In "Armageddon" released by touchstone a division of Disney, Patton plays Charles (Chick) Chapple, one of 13 oil rig workers drafted by NASA for a mission to intercept and destroy a killer asteroid. In a cast that includes some of films most frequently employed character actors- including Billy Bob Thorton and Steve Buscemi- Patton, 44, plays the hero's beatifically calm best friend. Though this is his first appearance is a summer blockbuster, Patton says he approached the role seriously as he does all roles.

" I can't play anything until I find something that connects to my life, something I can carry as my secret map or code for the character," he says.

Establishing a link to his role in "Armageddon" wasn't difficult. As a 19 year old aspiring actor, drifting about the country and picking up odd jobs to pay his way to New York City, he found work cleaning up an oil spill on the Mississippi River.

Patton and his fellow laborers were paid to lean off the edge of a barge and, using giant mops, scoop up the oil slick.

" It was kind of anonymous," he says. "As the boss was leaving in his motorboat, he says, 'oh by the way, if you fall in you'll be sucked right under.'"

Patton would rather keep most of the details about his life to himself. He generally avoided the publicity campaign for Armageddon in part, he says because he hadn't seen the finished print of the film.

He has instead spent the last month driving from LA back home to Manhattan. Along the way he stopped in Idaho to do one days work on Breakfast of Champions, an independent film directed by Alan Rudolph.

" In a way I feel completely frightened of dealing with other human beings at all, yet here I am sticking my face in front of a movie camera all the time," Patton says.

Something unexpected

Patton is well known for his work in more than 40 plays in NY and has won three Obie awards. But he is also a favorite among film directors.

Nicolas Roeg, who directed Patton in the little seen spiritual thriller "Cold Heaven", called him a "Marvelous and spontaneous actor." Roeg says reliable supporting players often run the risk of being typecast.

"But Will, because of the breadth of his talent, has not let himself be identified as a marketable piece of villainy or goodness," the director says. "He's got a quality that is innate. he has a sense of threat about danger necessarily, but for the audience, the threat of something unexpected."

Patton has volunteered for some of the uncomfortable jobs. He told Michael Bay, the director of "Armageddon", to put him "wherever there's fire, or explosions or oil falling all over us, that's where I want to be because that's what this movie is all about."

But one of his favorite rolls was in "Cold Heaven" in which he played a priest. And he particularly liked working with Roeg, who he says was open to suggestions.

"I could pull out a picture book in the middle of shooting, or discuss an essay that Flannery O'Conner wrote about birds and say, 'That's how I feel this could be about,'" Patton says. " There are very few people in movies who can work with that, but Nic hopes and expects that kind of exploration."

Plays in the barn

Born in Charleston, S.C., Patton is oldest of three children. His father was a Lutheran minister and later a chaplain at Duke University. When he was a small child, his parents ran a foster home for wayward teenage boys on the family farm near Charleston, and every Saturday night, the boys put on plays and revues in the barn.

"I must have been 5 years old," Patton says laughing. "I don't know what they were doing, but the brought me out on stage. And I had on this little hula skirt, and women's eye makeup, and something done to my hair. And I remember the whole house full of juvenile delinquents and me and both having this moment of ecstasy. I think that's where it all went wrong."

After attending public schools in North and South Carolina, and studying writing, painting and theater at the experimental Hampton Day on Long Island, Patton spent a year at the North Carolina School for the Arts before dropping out and heading for New York.

"for the first 7 years or so I held so many different jobs while I was doing theater: selling Christmas trees, working as an elevator operator, at an all night vegetable market," Patton says. I think I chose jobs in which I'd struggle and be unhappy so I'd be forcing myself to get acting work."

One of his first breaks was a yearlong stint on daytime television drama "Ryan's Hope," playing Ox Knowles, a race car driver.

Small roles in two New York based independent films-"After Hours" and "Desperately Seeking Susan"- soon followed, and he seemed to be on the edge of stardom. But when Patton's next film, "No Way Out" became a hit, he was far from Hollywood, starring in New York and London productions of Shepard's "Lie of the Mind".

After "Armageddon", Patton says he was searching for a new challenge, and not necessarily on the screen.

" I feel a lack in me for not doing theater for so long," says the actor, who has not appeared on stage since 1988. " That's the thing that has meant the most to me in m life."

But he says he could not take a stage role "unless I feel a life and death connection to it."