BY EVAN HENERSON >STAFF WRITER

There's no calculating how many more-recognizable actors have passed on the roles Dylan Baker eventually got to play.

Baker figures there are many. That's just the nature of business, says the 48-year-old actor - an "oh yeah, that guy" performer if ever there was one.

And he's good at it. Over the course of a 32-year film and TV career, Baker has played detectives and defense secretaries, principals and pedophiles, with the occasional role in a blockbuster franchise thrown in for good measure.

"I get offered roles other actors decide, `I don't know what the hell to do with this,"' says Baker. "I feel sometimes that I get the leftovers and then turn them into something interesting."

The leftovers - if such they are - have been bountiful of late. Baker can be seen as a never-say-die Chicago Cubs fan named Mad Dog opposite Matthew Broderick in the just released "Diminished Capacity" and as the non-favored son to Ellen Burstyn's Canadian dowager in "The Stone Angel" opening in select theaters today.

Broadway-goers can catch Baker finishing up a run as the straight-man attorney to Nathan Lane's President Charles Smith in David Mamet's "November." The Mamet comedy caps a string of three consecutive plays for Baker dating back to last summer. He'll dive back into TV with the NBC series "Kings" with Ian McShane in September.

Whether Baker was a first or fifth choice for any of these roles is a matter entirely for casting directors to sort out. But in casting the deceptively calm Mad Dog, "Diminished Capacity" director Terry Kinney thought of Baker immediately, and used the actor in early script readings that dated back to 2000.

The two actors had shared the stage in a production of Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth" in the mid-1980s but had not worked together since. But Baker is perpetually occupying Kinney's radar.

"Every time I direct, I think of a role for him," says Kinney, one of the founders of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. "He reminds me of Gary Cooper. I wanted the character to have this quiet, subdued quality, kind of an Americana, the way Gary Cooper carried himself. Dylan came to me."

The decision to take the role was a no-brainer, contends Baker, who knows a little something about the sports obsessed.

"Cub fans are a world unto their own, especially with their long wait for another championship," Baker says. "All of us have our crosses to bear. I'm a Redskins fan under the thrall of (coach) Joe Gibbs' ability to produce Super Bowl appearances. Every year, we start off with, `This new guy's going to bring us back.'

"There's that sports fan in everybody, and that belief that maybe this time is different," he continues. "That's what my (`Diminished Capacity') character gets more than anything: How dare you bring me to that vulnerable spot yet again!"

"The Stone Angel" is another reunion. Baker and Burstyn - longtime friends - had worked together in the short-lived NBC comedy "The Book of Daniel." An adaptation of the much-beloved 1964 novel by Margaret Laurence, "The Stone Angel" filmed in Winnipeg in the summer of 2006.

"It was a wonderful set," recalls Baker, "because every single Canadian there comes up to you and says, `This book is our "Grapes of Wrath."' They all had to read it in elementary school, and it holds a special place in their hearts."

Baker's Marvin Shipley spends a significant portion of the film trying to place his 90-something mother, Hagar (played by Burstyn), in a nursing home, before mother and son reach a kind of resolution.

"My mother, thankfully, is still with us at 92," says Baker. "That whole triad of mother, wife and son never goes away. It's always there in the family's makeup. I loved the way the script handled that."

Baker made his film debut in 1987 in the John Hughes-directed Steve Martin comedy "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." Moving among film, TV and stage, Baker was nominated for a Tony Award for his role as a prince in the modern verse play "La Bete" in 1991.

In 1994, producer Steven Bochco's decision to cast Baker as Detective Arthur Polson in "Murder One" threw the actor for a loop.

"I can remember being worried that when I showed up on the set, they were going to take one look at me and say, `No, no. Not him. I meant the other guy,"' says Baker. "I couldn't imagine anybody seeing me as this hard-bitten detective. Then, for the next few years, all I got offered were FBI guys and hard-bitten detectives."

Critics took notice of Baker's performance as a pedophile who rapes two of his son's friends in Todd Solondz's dark comedy "Happiness" (1998). The role earned Baker an Independent Spirit Award nomination as well as some rather unique - and decidedly non-Gary Cooper-esque - opportunities for future work.

If people are going to recognize him, Baker contends it's usually for his turn as Dr. Curt "the Lizard" Connors in the second and third chapters of "Spider-Man."

"Then (fans) jump all over the place and want to get one of my arms as a memory of it or something," Baker says.

"The thing about the franchise, I think, is that Sam Raimi directing all three of them kept it as an ongoing journey. It didn't kind of fall off in one way or another. I hope he'll continue on with it."

Evan Henerson (818) 713-3651

evan.henerson@dailynews.com