UNIVERSAL CITY, CAL.
Two years ago, she turned a bowler hat into an erotic object during those sizzling bedroom scenes in The Unbearable Lightness Of Being.

In 1989, she further heated up the screens with her Oscar-nominated performance as the doomed but sexually predatory Masha in Enemies: A Love Story.

In the eyes of Hollywood pundits, that's enough to make Lena Olin filmland's hottest new sex symbol. The label clearly amuses the Swedish actress.

"Well, you can't be too concerned about things like that," she comments with a throaty laugh.

In any event, she'll never in a thousand years allow Hollywood to mold her persona. She can barely tolerate the place.

And she certainly doesn't worry about typecasting.

"I don't think anyone can typecast you if you don't want to be typecast,"she says.

"You just have to say no. If there's something I want to do, I do it. If there's something I don't want to do, I don't do it."

She pauses and leans forward in her chair to remove a bit of lint from an elegant brown lace-up boot.

"I just do what I want to do," she says quietly but firmly.

Her new movie, Havana, features bedroom scenes with Robert Redford, but that's not why she took the role. In fact, she notes gently, there's far less physical exposure than in the two previous films.

She took the role because director Sydney Pollack offered it to her and because she was attracted to both the character, a woman devoted to the cause of social justice, and the setting, Cuba in the late 1950s on the eve of Fidel Castro's revolution.

What she treasures most is her personal and artistic integrity. That's why she says she'll never be a Hollywood actress. That's why she will always consider herself a stranger in a strange land when she comes to work in the United States.

The 35-year-old Olin's true spiritual home is Stockholm's prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre. And her true mentor is the theatre's head - the great Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman.

"Because I first met him when I was very young," she says, "he got me on the right track. He's very down to earth, very practical. He instilled in me certain values."

Her English-speaking film assignments are mere interludes. Right now she's anxious to return to Sweden to begin stage rehearsals for Ibsen's Romersholm under Bergman's direction.

"Theatre is a rescue for me. I look on it as a blessing. I'm very happy with my work there.

If she weren't, she says, "I would feel in a terrible state over here, because I would never want be to dependent on an American film career."

Olin already has upset some American reporters by telling them that Fidel Castro has been regarded as a hero in Sweden. Now, she's equally unrepentant in expressing her views on Hollywood's tinsel kingdom.

"If there's something I really want to do, I go over here and do it. But if it was my goal to make an American film career, I would feel terrible because it takes so much to keep your integrity in this country. It's very different from Sweden."

When she talks of integrity, she's also talking about preserving her independence as a human being.

"There are so many people in this country wanting you to do things you don't want to do. There is this need to please people, but I think that to be really creative you shouldn't please anything or anyone.

"You just do what you have to do. If you feel this need to please, you can lose something very important as an artist."

But Olin even admits to a love-hate ambivalence about the job of acting - even though she can't imagine herself doing anything else.

"There's something terrible about this business. I really love my job. I don't want to do anything else, but there is something disgusting about it."

What bothers her is the element of make-believe, of pretending, that is inherent in acting.

It even bothered her as a child. She loved going to the theatre, but she hated seeing her actress-mother perform.

"I thought she was fooling so many people, that she was pretending something that wasn't true."

She has the same misgivings when performing herself.

"You have to deceive . . . I am so afraid of manipulating feelings . . . it's so difficult to sort out what is pretend and what is real."

This inner turmoil helps explain why she avoids watching herself on screen. She admits she's curious to know how Havana turned out - but still hesitates to see the finished film. "There's something so awful about seeing yourself exposed in this way!"

Pollack says Olin's reputation as a torrid sex symbol has obscured her exceptional qualities as an actress.

She was his choice from the beginning for the role in Havana, because he needed a particular type of woman to play opposite the Redford character of an aging gambler.

"This is a film in which Redford is the pursuer of a woman rather than the pursued," Pollack says.

"And because this is the reverse of what he's always played, it's going to require an exceptional woman. She's fighting a mythical movie tradition - she's going to knock the pins from under Robert Redford."

Furthermore, Olin has certain qualities which give credibility to love scenes with an actor now in his 50s.

"There's something ageless about Lena," says Pollack. "I wouldn't have been surprised if somebody had told me she was 29. I wouldn't have been surprised if she was 44.

"I knew she could work with Bob, age-wise. Many of today's actresses are a little bit too young to work with Bob now."

Many thanks to Jinnie for this article!