SCREEN PLAY

Not long ago, Eddie Cibrian and Eliel Swinton were football teammates at Montclair Prep and more concerned with scoring touchdowns than eluding fans.

Cibrian is one of the stars on the daytime soap opera “Sunset Beach” and so popular among women viewers that if he showed up at a crowded restaurant, he’d be fortunate to leave without his shirt in tatters.

Swinton isn’t that popular--yet. He’s just starting in the acting business. He makes his movie debut in “Varsity Blues,” a coming-of-age high school football comedy that will be released by Paramount on Jan. 15.

It’s a major change in direction for Swinton, who averaged 16.4 yards per carry as a high school tailback in 1992, then played cornerback at Stanford for four years.

He planned to join his brother, Jamal, as a producer and was serving as a production assistant for a cable television series when his career plans suddenly changed.

Swinton was delivering a script to director Brian Robbins, a former junior varsity football coach at Montclair Prep.

“He was like, ‘You know what? We’re casting for this movie right now,’ ” Swinton said. “ ‘You’ve got a great look. Why don’t you try reading for this part?’

“I always wanted to be an actor, but I wanted to be a producer. Instead of killing time filing papers, I read for it and he said I did a good job. I went, ‘No I didn’t.’ He goes, ‘You were really good.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah, this is really going to happen.’

“The next week, I get a page from his office: ‘Why don’t you come back and read again?’ A week later, I found myself on a plane for Austin, Texas, to star in a movie with Jon Voight and James Van Der Beek. I was ecstatic.”

Swinton’s previous acting experience consisted of playing a paperboy in a fifth-grade play. So forgive him for feeling excited when he looked up at the big screen during a preview of the movie last month and saw his name in the opening credits.

“This is my life now,” he said. “I look at it as another adventure, another voyage.”

Instead of memorizing playbooks and studying videotape in preparation for football games, Swinton is taking acting lessons, going to auditions and trying to learn all about his new profession.

“I look at going on an audition as if I’m playing a football game,” he said. “You practice all week long, then you go and play. You either succeed or fail. Acting is a little different. I guess you can fail, but it’s a lot harder. It’s not about who you are. It’s about what the casting director is looking for when you walk in the door. They can look at you already before you say a word and say, ‘Too big, too skinny, too strong.’ ”

Cibrian and Swinton were teammates at Montclair Prep in 1990.

Cibrian has gone on to become a rising young actor. Last month, he starred in the CBS television movie, “Logan’s War: Bound by Honor.”

“We go places and it’s, ‘Oh my God, aren’t you on Sunset Beach?’ ” Swinton said of the fan reaction to Cibrian.

Montclair Prep, a tiny four-year school in Van Nuys, has turned out several actors. They include Stephen Dorff, who played a vampire opposite Wesley Snipes in “Blade.”

Others are Shane Conrad, Randy Spelling and Danny Pintauro, a co-star for nine seasons on the TV series “Who’s the Boss?”

“A lot of celebrities’ children go there,” Swinton said of Montclair Prep. “You’re around that atmosphere. You’re sucked up into it and it becomes part of your life.”

In “Varsity Blues,” Swinton is one of five high school seniors from a small town in Texas who try to deal with a win-at-all-costs coach played by Voight.

Van Der Beek, who stars in “Dawson’s Creek,” is the backup quarterback who must replace the injured starter.

There are stereotypes in the story line about high school football--players drinking, players partying, parents living vicariously through their kids. The humor is raunchy at times, which shouldn’t come as a surprise since the movie is in association with MTV Films.

Swinton’s friends will be most impressed with the pounding he endured playing running back. He said it required more than 13 takes to get one punishing tackle scene on film.

“I felt dead,” Swinton said. “My head was ringing, my nose was starting to bleed. There was no way I was going to use a stunt double.

“I didn’t want to hear from my friends, ‘You’re Hollywood now. You can’t do your own scenes.’ ”

Whether Swinton can repeat the success of his football days in the acting field remains to be seen. But he intends to use the same determination and drive he learned as an athlete.

“Practice doesn’t make perfect,” he said. “Perfect practice makes perfect.”

Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422.