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Show BIZARRO CLOSE TO HOME Jourt will not TWte tutUefi Wk on until you tell A tke truth! u As 'Cleaner,' Bratt helps addicts kick the habit turn tke Frazier Moore THE identity-muddle- Benjamin Bratt remembers the concept Cleaner." It grabbed him, "however unbelievable I found it to be." Months later, he read the pilot script and saw the possibilities in this new A&E drama series. He liked how it's part serialized portrait, part procedural. As for a heroin-addih bid for hero whose recovery calls for him to help other addicts get clean, well, this "extreme interventionism" still had Bratt scratching his told you this was going to be a very invasive surgery." -I- . i . ii ' I 4 o B ! ( 'M MOT Dizzy yer v. drama (which, in its few last-ditc- I NBC d ASSOCIATED PRESS epi- sodes, drifted from a Pentagon version of "The West Wing" to a thriller). Earlier this season he headlined A&E's miniseries remake of "The Andromeda Strain." But Bratt is maybe best known (and still seen in reDetecruns) as straight-arrotive Rey Curtis on "Law & Order," TV's reigning procedural drama. "Audiences really like proce-duralbut they often exist to the detriment of any personal globe-trottin- g s, life for the characters," Bratt observes. "That's fine for head. viewers. But, after awhile, it "In my first meeting with the wasn't fine for me as an actor, as much as I loved that show Jonathan Prince and the people I was working and Robert Munic, I asked them, 'How do you think audi- with." He left in 1999 after four seaences are gonna take to the idea? It seems a little outside sons busting crime alongside the realm of possibility.' Jerry Orbach as Detective Len-ni- e Briscoe (warmly remem"And they said, 'It happens bered by Bratt as "a magician to be based on a real guy' Warren Boyd, who happens to in a lot of different senses of be a of the show." the word, a magical sort of As William Banks (the charguy")A decade later, Bratt finds acter Boyd inspired), Bratt leads an he's still a fan of the show, trio of other former users, a sort of despite having once been part (as in "addicts") who'll of it. do almost anything, even at "I've been to Oz and pulled the curtain back," he says with their own risk, to save their a chuckle. "I know what the On the home front, Banks is 'Law & Order' machinations are. It doesn't matter. Even a veteran of jail terms and rehab who loves his wife and two today, if I'm running through kids but neglects them. He sees channels and I stumble on that intro teaser, I have to sit down his mission as "the cleaner" as a pact made with God, a sacred and watch. It's just that good." He marvels at its calling that comes before evseasons. "There's never erything. Maybe he has traded been a show like it." one addiction for another. "A case is opened and closed Recently, Bratt wrapped his each week," says Bratt, whose latest film, in which he plays show premiered Tuesday. "But a Latino working man who that's not the whole thrust. It's learns that the teenage son he balanced by this idiosyncratic, adores is gay. "Mission Street complex character: As good as Rhapsody" was written and directed by Peter Bratt, and William Banks wants to be and is, in his chosen profession shot in the Latin neighborhood of San Francisco's Mission Dishe's far less effective as a trict. It clearly was a passion husband and father. "That's what excites me the project for both of them. "I'm lucky to have my most, playing that home stuff!" In recent years, Bratt, 44, brother an incredible talent and my best friend," says has been seen in a variety of films including "Traffic," "Love Bratt. "I'll always make films in the Time of Cholera," "Miss with him." With "Rhapsody" in Congeniality" and as the Bratt is busy on Miguel Pinero in "The Cleaner" and pleased "Pinero," which he calls his "proudest piece of work." (It's to have a steady gig in Los also how he met Talisa Soto, a Angeles, where he and Soto of the 2001 film and his live with daughter son wife of six years.) Sophia and Mateo. In 2005 he starred in the - addict-in-nee- f ZZT71 J PEOPLE Affi BLANKET... I'M II j :'tf't" 2 I HEAR I J) YOUR tAORAL COMPASS IS DAMAGED AND YOU'RE BEING GROOrAED FOR UPPER MANAGEMENT. I E J-- UlTUteUHWIWMS! V- 7, I'Ofe- --j I t J 5 9 1 I (J WAS THAT WRONG? BECAUSE I CANT TELL J - ht co-st- n, |