RUBEN BLADES: Singer, Actor, Politico

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Ruben Blades is losing his patience. Dressed in a flashy magenta jacket and a black narrow-brimmed hat, he fidgets with his breakfast at Pluto's restaurant, a greasy spoon in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn. He is on his third cup of coffee when Spike Lee walks in and takes a seat at the counter. "Giant, see the paper?" Blades says, holding up a copy of the New York Post.

"I can read," Lee replies, as he sidles over to Blades' booth.

"Can you count?" Blades rejoins. "You owe me. What are we going to do?"

"Cut!" someone yells, and Petey the uptight bookie once again becomes Blades the affable actor. The Panamanian-born, Harvard-educated lawyer and international salsa star is filming a cameo for Variations on the Mo' Better Blues, Lee's follow-up to his controversial hit, Do the Right Thing. After the final take, the crew bursts into applause. "I look for people who are natural in front of the camera," says Lee of his decision to cast Blades. "Ruben is a very naturalistic actor and a really nice guy."

During the ride back to Manhattan, Blades returns the compliment. "It's always a pleasure to find someone whose work is authentic," he says. "Playing with my band is the same feeling. It's like dancing with the truth, and she likes it. The closer you get, the more you enjoy it; the more you dance, the better it feels."

Multilingual and multifaceted, Blades has a knack for being different things to different people. In his native Panama, he is a respected lawyer and national celebrity, a man of the people and potential presidential contender. To fans of Caribbean salsa, he is a musical pioneer and a charismatic leader of the Nueva Cancion (New Song) movement, a steamy mix of poetry, politics and tropical rhythms that has left an imprint on Latin music. In the U.S., he is an up-and-coming actor who has worked with Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg and Robert Redford in such films as Fatal Beauty, Critical Condition and The Milagro Beanfield War.

Small wonder Blades' detractors, perhaps a bit jealously, have accused him of spreading himself too thin. "It's not a problem because I'm doing things that I like," he says. "I know I can't be at two places at the same time."

But that has not stopped him from trying. In addition to writing the score for the upcoming Sidney Lumet film Q and A, Blades has completed acting parts in three movies: Spike Lee's film; The Lemon Sisters, starring Diane Keaton; and The Two Jakes, the sequel to Chinatown that features Jack Nicholson as star and director. Nicholson shot around Blades' music tour in order to nab him for the role of Mickey Nice, a Jewish gangster from Los Angeles' Boyle Heights section. "He brought a lot of energy and good acting instincts to the role," reports Nicholson. "I think the result is fabulous." Blades and his band Son del Solar (Sound of the Tenement) are in the midst of completing three new records for the Elektra label -- a live recording plus two studio albums -- to be released over the next three years. He will also try to squeeze in a drama workshop at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, based on Dead Man Out, the HBO movie in which he stirringly portrays a death-row prisoner.