NEW YORK
Tell Lena Olin she's called ''the thinking man's beauty'' and she laughs. Deep and smoky and sexy.

''Who is the unthinking man, I wonder?'' she chuckles, then pauses, and adds, ''And what does he think, this 'thinking man?' ''

For a minute you wonder if the 35-year-old Swedish co-star of Robert Redford's new movie, Havana, has any clue as to just how much of a lust object for the intelligentsia she has become. Her nude scenes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being grabbed U.S. audiences and her Oscar nomination for Enemies: A Love Story, earned her critical respect.

Women may say, ''Who's that?'' when her name is mentioned.

But men sigh.

''You are seriously beautiful,'' says Robert Redford, gazing into her eyes in Havana, opening nationwide today.

''Exotic,'' says Ron Silver, her Enemies co-star. ''Very sexy ... with a tremendous sense of self-worth.''

Redford says what sets her apart from other actresses is her ''depth of feeling.''

It is that depth, along with a sophisticated European aura - even in jeans Olin is elegant - that makes her seem much older than 35.

''There's something intense and compact about her,'' says Lacey Neuhaus Dorn, director of Washington, D.C.'s Art in Embassies program, who was at Monday night's Manhattan Havana premiere.

''Very pure,'' says Mary Stuart Masterson of Olin.

''I think it's nice to see a woman acting like a woman,'' quips Stockard Channing.

''She was the most beautiful person at the Oscars,'' adds New York writer Lisa Birnbach, also at the premiere. ''She smolders in a politically correct way.''

All of which adds to Olin's appeal, offscreen and on. And helps explain why Sydney Pollack cast her opposite the 53-year-old Redford in this movie - a Casablanca-type love triangle with Redford and Raul Julia in pre-Castro Cuba.

''I think she was unusual enough to make Redford the chaser instead of the chased,'' Pollack says. ''She has a European gravity and weight to her.''

U.S. actresses ''are a bit too young for Bob,'' he told Premiere. ''And the other ones who might be right for this might be a bit too old.''

Olin also offers a frank, candid innocence. There's nothing sly about her.

For example, she doesn't shy away from talking about her 4-year-old son, August, born out of wedlock.

''I didn't try to become pregnant,'' she says. - ''I was working hard and thought it would never happen to me, for some reason.'' The father is Swedish actor Orjan Ramberg. They have since separated.

''I didn't give much thought to the pregnancy and that was good because then I had my son and,'' she snaps her fingers, ''four days later I was up and I looked pretty normal.'' Three months later, she filmed nude scenes for Unbearable.

''The nudity of the body or the nudity of the soul - it's part of the character,'' she says. ''I'm not anxious to show my body, but it's no more big a deal than to show my eyes.''

She melts back into her overstuffed hotel-suite chair, puffing on a cigarette and sipping coffee, and says, ''Oh yes, I would love to have more children. I'd like to have a daughter. One or two.''

But no time soon?

''There has to be a man involved,'' she laughs. And there isn't one, she says.

No Redford-Olin offscreen liaison - a la Madonna and Warren Beatty for Dick Tracy? Olin says she's not drooling over Redford.

She admits she ''felt frightened'' when she heard she'd be playing opposite him.

'' 'Cause he's a huge star and by that time I had done American films and you hear so many things about American actors. But,'' she says, ''after spending two seconds with this extremely sweet person, that went away. He very soon stopped being Robert Redford to me.''

She called him ''my mountain of security'' at Monday's premiere of Havana, where she looked more like a deer caught in headlights than a glamorous movie star. Notoriously shy, she kept hiding out in the ladies' room with her publicist.

Fans are a different story.

''I got back (after the premiere) and I had nightmares because I couldn't speak to people. I hate parties and I hate to be social but if people have been standing in the cold with a picture, I would like to look them in the eyes and write my name. I feel very sad I didn't get to do that.''

It's not that she's one of these celebrities who moans about the burden of being famous and shuns publicity. It's that she truly has always felt more expressive when the camera is on her, something she credits to early influence by legendary director Ingmar Bergman.

''To me acting is not pretending, it's showing sides of myself from real life,'' she says.

Her parents were both actors, but their marriage soon ended in divorce. It was not a happy childhood, but she did grow up seeing Chekov and Shakespeare plays and found the theater spellbinding. She resisted going into acting - hating to be forced into a career that was expected. After substitute teaching for a while, she was drawn back to the safety of her characters.

''I actually feel I get closer to myself and closer to the people around me when I work. I feel more myself when I work,'' she says. But she can't abide watching her finished products. ''When I sit there as a private person - Lena, exposed - it's painful.''

In fact, she has compared watching her performances to unearthing a love letter written years ago. Reading it is awkward, embarrassing. Makes her feel vulnerable.

When she's working, she can shield herself from that, transforming herself.

''You're a monster,'' she says, waving her hands in the air and grabbing wildly. ''You devour - is that the word in English? - this whole life and bring it into your character. I take walks, do the dishes - the character is there constantly. Then you start shooting and then it's like my head was chopped off and you use other sides of yourself.''

Comparisons have been made to the late, reclusive actress Greta Garbo, also Swedish, but Olin says, ''Yeah, we're from Sweden, and she wasn't a very out kind of person. But I don't put much ... how you put that in English?'' Stock?

''Stock, exactly, in that.''

But it's Redford who has said the biggest challenge awaiting Olin is dealing with being a big star. Will she give up the flat near the woods she has had for 10 years in Stockholm? Will she move to Los Angeles or New York?

''I'm beginning to fall in love with things here,'' she concedes. ''Mostly people. And that's dangerous. When I first got here I would wake up every morning just dying to get back home. Just dying. And now, I'm starting to get attached to things. People I work with. People I've met. The enthusiasm.

''There's something very generous here.''

Many thanks to Jinnie for this article!