I walked down eighth Avenue in a chill wind, past a burnt-out building and a gutted Chinese restaurant, heading for Chelsea, the West Side Manhattan neighborhood where the actor William Petersen was staying in a pal's apartment.

When I got there, I saw an eviction notice posted in the lobby. And when Petersen came downstairs, he said, "Come on, let's go around the corner. There's no heat or hot water today." So we walked to a little coffee shop with steamy windows where it was warm and we could talk.

Billy Petersen (as he likes to be called) is one of those wonderful actors you've seen in plenty of films and TV shows and maybe even onstage and still don't know his name. At least, not until now.

All that is about to change. In a span of five weeks, Petersen opened on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana, with Cherry Jones and Marsha Mason; he has a new film called Fear, co-starring Mark Wahlberg (the former rap star Marky Mark); and he stars in the NBC miniseries Beast based on a thriller by Peter Benchley, the best-selling author of Jaws.

It occurred to me that, a year from now, Billy Petersen will be living somewhat more lavishly than he is now.

This production of Iguana was first performed in Chicago in 1994. I knew Petersen also played Stanley Kowalski in Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, and I asked him to compare the two plays. "Iguana is a much more mature work than Streetcar," he said. "Shannon (the defrocked minister played by Petersen) has many of the same characteristics as Blanche, and Maxine (played by Marsh Mason) has many of Stanley's."

"It's a killer role," he added. (Richard Burton played his part in the film.) "It's a wonderful production, and a lot of people are going to rediscover this play."

In Fear, he's a father of Reese Witherspoon, who plays a 16-year-old "whose first boy-friend (Wahlberg) turns out to be a psychopath who ends up trashing my family," said Petersen. "I did Return to Lonesome Dove with Reese," he added. "She was the child bride of Oliver Reed, if you can picture that!"

What about Beast? "I've fished all my life," he said. "and it was fun to play a fisherman and have a commercial trawler at my disposal. When you consider the nightmare it was to film Jaws and what Waterworld went through, it's amazing we're not still there (in Australia, where Beast was shot), still filming. Karen Sillas plays a Coast Guard Lieutenant whose a diver. I love to dive myself, but in the film I don't do much diving. I'm out there fishing."

Maybe for an apartment with a few creature comforts?

Personal: Born Feb. 21, 1953, in Evanston, Ill. Divorced; one daughter, Maite, 20

Television: Includes The Kennedys of Massachusetts, 1990; Return to Lonesome Dove, 1992; Beast, 1996

Films: Include To Live and Die in L.A., 1985; Manhunter, 1986; Cousins, 1989; Young Guns II, 1990; Deadly Currents, 1993, In the Kingdom of the Blind, 1995; Fear, 1996

Theater: Includes Chicago productions of The Tooth of Crime, (for Remains Theatre Ensemble, which he cofounded in 1979); Fool for Love (Steppenwolf company), 1984: In the Belly of the Beast, 1985; Speed-the-Plow, 1989; and The Night of the Iguana, 1994, A Streetcar Named Desire, Stratford, Ontario, 1984; The Night of the Iguana, Broadway, 1996.

Billy Petersen's folks have a four-generation retail furniture business in Evanston, Ill. "My dad didn't pressure me to go into it." he said. "They never really had hope for me to hold down a job." So off he went to play football for Idaho State. As for his athletic ability, Billy is pretty funny: "I played cornerback in college and returned kicks," he said. "The reason I made it as a defensive back was I could run backward pretty fast. In high school I played baseball, basketball and football, and I'm a pretty good tennis player."

He compares acting to big-time sports. "Look at the Knicks and the Bulls, Michael Jordan. They play maybe three times a week for two hours and make millions. We play eight times a week for three hours and make $850." Petersen still lives in Chicago. ("I'd rather be a struggling actor in Chicago than in New York.") He has a 20-year-old daughter in college in California but isn't married right now. "As my character says in Iguana, 'No saint or civilized woman would have me.'"