TALIA SHIRE'S SON, RUSHMORE STAR JASON SCHWARTZMAN,

DOES WHAT COMES NATURALLY

People  ::  2/22/99

When Jason Schwartzman was just 6 or 7 years old, his mother, Rocky star Talia Shire, took him to a top Beverly Hills hairdresser. On his way out, the determined child leaned over, gathered his hair off the floor and deposited it back on his head. As other customers gaped, he announced, "I'm going out with my own hair!"

Now 18, Schwartzman has maintained his rep as a kid unlike many others. So much so that when a casting director met him at a 1997 party, she promptly asked him to audition for the lead in the film Rushmore as, says Schwartzman, "a horny, eccentric teenager who likes older women and writes plays." Though he had never acted before, Schwartzman says, "I remember thinking, 'That sounds like me. I can do me.'"

That he can. As Max Fischer in the quirky comedy Rushmore, Schwartzman has won accolades from critics and costars alike. "At first he was quite scared of me," says Olivia Williams, 30, who plays his older love interest. "But he had an essay to do for school, and we would sit and talk about Hamlet together. He's sophisticated in ways that are quite extraordinary conversationally." Despite his inexperience, she notes that "he had an amazing ability. He can improvise, and it's very relaxed and easy in the way he interprets the script."

He was anything but relaxed at his audition. "I don't think nervous is the word," he says. "I was paranoid, freaked out." Which, says Rushmore writer-director Wes Anderson, made him ideal for the role. "We needed somebody who was a little strange, some sort of rock star kid that was also sort of an oddball." Out of 1,800 prospects, "he was the strongest."

Chalk it up to genetics. His mother made her mark in The Godfather films (as Michael Corleone's sister Connie); his father, Jack Schwartzman, was a producer and entertainment lawyer who died of pancreatic cancer in 1994; and his mother's brother is Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola. "There's a genetic karma in our family," says Shire. "I'm not a stage mother, but ultimately I'm a creative artist in a family of artists, and I hope we can always turn to each other."

Despite the showbiz pedigree, Schwartzman - who grew up in Los Angeles, where he still lives with his mother, his brother Robert, 16, and their pugs Bogey, Bella and Stella - claims to have had a typical childhood. At Little League games, his father was always "the one dad sitting in the top bleachers with a big bag of sunflower seeds, just cheering us on. He was extremely caring, very sensitive and passionate." Just before he died, says Schwartzman, "I had time to really sit there with him and talk to him and make peace with him. I don't feel like there's a loss."

Schwartzman was an inventive child, often scribbling poems - a source of amusement to Robert and half brother Matthew Shire, 23, Talia's son from a first marriage. "We were like three clowns," he says. "They're my buddies, my best friends. They always made fun of me because I was the sensitive one." Then he got a drum set on his 10th birthday and found a new calling. Four years ago he and four friends formed the rock band Phantom Planet, which recently signed a recording contract with Geffen Records. Schwartzman, who graduated last year from L.A.'s Windward School, where he was vice president of the student council, says he plans to go to college someday. But he hasn't made up his mind about acting. "If I wanted to continue to act," he says, "it would be a necessity to become more involved in the Hollywood world. It's a whole aesthetic. Once I figure it out, then maybe I'd like to pursue it. It's just fun for now."

Meanwhile, he spends free time going to movies, listening to The Who and the Beatles and playing Nintendo. Whatever career he chooses, he's sure he'll succeed. His father, he says, "taught me to know about everything so I'm always in control. If you have something you want to do that you love, you should do it. That's what I've learned in this family."