August 27, 2004 | Morris Chestnut chuckles heartily as he admits that, when he learned he had landed a key role in Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, it was a classic case of good news, bad news.

"They told me we'd be going to Fiji for three months," he recalls. "And I figured, well, that's a nice resort-type place. I mean, I'd seen the postcards, right?"

The bad news? Well, take another look at the movie's title.

Set to open this weekend at theaters and drive-ins everywhere, Anacondas is a follow-up to Anaconda, the 1997 horror-adventure about a marauding reptile only slightly smaller than the Alaskan pipeline. (Jennifer Lopez played a lead role - not the title role, mind you, but a lead nonetheless - in the earlier flick.) In the new film, which Chestnut promoted during a recent Manhattan press gathering, the stakes are higher - and the snakes, more plentiful.

"The trouble is," Chestnut says, "one of my worst phobias is snakes. In fact, I have to tell you: The first thing I thought was, hey, this is the wrong movie for me. There's no way I can do this."

Fortunately, Chestnut found he wouldn't actually have to share the screen with scaly scene-stealers. As Gordon Mitchell, a research scientist who seeks youth-preserving orchids in the jungles of Borneo, the 35-year-old actor interacted only with human co-stars during the on-location shoot. (Borneo is played, in a bold stroke of casting, by Fiji.) The really, really big snakes - which, alas, just happen to share the same habitant as the invaluable orchids - are nothing more than computer-generated images, added to the movie during the post-production process.

Which is not to say, however, that this rumble in the jungle was a walk in the park.

"As it turned out," Chestnut says, "we really didn't film in that resort-type area of Fiji after all. We were, like, two hours away from all that, in very non-resort-type hotels. And it was a very difficult shoot - lots of physical stuff, lots of time in the river, lots of time with the rain machine. And you could never really dry yourself off between takes.

"But I wound up learning how to play poker, thanks to (co-stars) Nicholas Gonzalez and Johnny Messner. And the really great thing was, because we were in Fiji, we got to use Fijian dollars. And a Fijian dollar is worth, oh, about five cents. So while I was learning how to play poker, I was doing it in a very safe environment."

When it comes to his career, however, Chestnut isn't averse to taking an occasional risk. After serving his apprenticeship as a supporting player in movies (Boyz N The Hood, G.I. Jane) and TV series (E.R., Living Single), he established himself as a hunky romantic lead in The Best Man (1999), Two Can Play That Game (2001) and other films aimed primarily at African-American audiences. (During the making of Best Man, he was affectionately nicknamed "Dark Gable" by his makeup artists.) But then, eager to avoid typecasting, he took a walk on the wild side as a sly and sophisticated bad guy opposite Steven Seagal in Half Past Dead (2002).

For the latter film, Chestnut says, "The director suggested that I shave my head, so I'd look more edgy, more menacing, than I usually do with wavy hair. And it worked. Which is why I'm shaved in (Anacondas), too. For me to get the edgier and more challenging roles, I have to lose the hair."

During his boyhood in Cerritos, Calif., Chestnut dreamed of making his mark as an NFL superstar. "But even when I was in high school," he says, "I would always pride myself on facing reality. And I was never one of those guys who were always getting 50 million letters from universities. I wasn't a High School All-American. So I simply told myself, 'Look, if I don't get a scholarship to play at a D-1 college, I'm not going to pursue it anymore.'

"I figured it wouldn't do much for me to go to a college and walk on for tryouts, and then have to fight for playing time against guys who are getting their tuition paid so they can play sports."

Instead, Chestnut attended Long Beach City College, and drifted into acting classes after seeing a friend perform in a school play. He eventually attracted an agent, who steered him to an audition for a guest spot on A Different World. It wasn't a big role - mostly, all he had to do was smile, flirt with some pretty young ladies, and say, "Hi!" But Chestnut made all the right moves for the sitcom casting directors. While he was on his way home from the audition, he got the good news from his agent: He was cast in a role that would pay $1,500 for one day's work.

"And that's when I started thinking to myself: 'Wow! If I go on that show for a week, and I make $1,500 just for saying "Hi!" -- the people who are on that show every week and have a lot of lines, they must be making some really nice money.' So I figured, from that point on, I'd better pursue this. I think I like this.

"You know, I think I've always been able to identify what I want and need in life, and figure out ways to get it - and then go after it. Even back when I was in elementary school, a group of people came in to demonstrate Duncan Yo-Yos. And after that, all I could think of was, 'How can I get a yo-yo?' What I wound up doing is saving my lunch money - my mother never knew about it - and I didn't each lunch for a whole week, just so I could get a yo-yo.

"And it's pretty much been that way for me throughout my life ever since."