Jesse Bradford moves into a new role

Memo to casting directors: Jesse Bradford wants to play Stevie Ray Vaughan.

He's not trying to be arrogant about it, understand, but his remarks on the subject are unusually sure for a 26-year-old teen idol with middle-class Connecticut roots and admittedly limited guitar-playing experience.

''Somebody write it for me," Bradford demands playfully during a recent stop in Boston to promote his new film, ''Heights," opening Friday. The ''Swimfan" star, who showed flashes of musical agility in ''Clockstoppers" and ''Bring It On," reveals that he's been mimicking Vaughan in private and following the progress of ''Sin City" director Robert Rodriguez's plans to make a biopic of the hard-living Texas blues legend. ''I'd never put myself on the same shelf as Stevie, but I can fake it like a [expletive]," Bradford announces with conviction.

Those are some puffy words for a Columbia University graduate who's all of one unshaven step removed from playing Josh Lyman's intern on ''The West Wing." But faking it, otherwise known as acting, is what this personable performer has been doing since he was 8 months old, when his parents (also actors) got him cast in a Q-tips commercial. At 4 he played Robert De Niro's son in ''Falling in Love," as a young teen he carried ''King of the Hill," and in the string of mostly undemanding films that followed (see ''Cherry Falls"), he's often been singled out for his potential.

''I was kind of the right age to be in an industry-wide boom of young marketable stuff," he says candidly, further upping his boy-next-door stock by mentioning that he flew in for this press junket a day early to visit his grandmother in Harwich. ''I don't want to say I'm trying to get away from the whole teen heartthrob thing, as if it's this bad thing that I want nothing to do with, but it's not the ultimate end to what I'm trying to do."

Translation: Get me out of here.

Bradford can use all the diplomatic language he wants, but he's clearly, if not militantly, hoping to attract a more mature fan base by playing against type in ''Heights," a surprising little genre bender that's as smart as it is entertaining. Directed by promising newcomer Chris Terrio, ''Heights" is one of those urban switchboard movies in which the characters are all plugged into the same small world but it takes a while to figure out how their lives are connected. Think ''Crash" without a racial agenda, or low-key Woody Allen with a darker third act.

Springing from a one-act play by Amy Fox (who shares screenplay credit with Terrio), ''Heights" offers a 24-hour snapshot of beautiful but gutless people who ultimately discover the truth about themselves and one another on New York City's rooftops and subways, where it's all too easy to turn this film title on its ear.

Pittsfield's own Elizabeth Banks stars as Isabel, a photographer who's dwarfed by her famous stage-diva mother (Glenn Close, on high emote) and having second thoughts about her engagement to a volatile, distracted attorney (James Marsden) who is himself keeping a secret. The film starts off making grand pronouncements about the value of living one's life passionately, then seems to settle into a kind of hip, sarcastic romantic farce before it takes an unexpected dramatic turn that involves Bradford's enigmatic character, Alec, a young actor looking for his first big break in the theater.

To say much more about Alec risks spoiling the intrigue, so we'll stop at applauding the actor for bravely throwing himself into pages of wordless inner turmoil and a pivotal kissing scene that he admits ''did not jibe with my mojo." The movie's Merchant Ivory Productions pedigree attracted Banks (who wants you to know she'll be back home starring in a Williamstown Theatre Festival staging of ''Bus Stop" this August), and the ''Seabiscuit" actress says she figured ''if the script was good enough for Glenn Close, it was good enough for me."

Bradford echoes her sentiments, while adding a somber note: His relationship with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, the latter credited as a producer of ''Heights," dates to the late 1990s, when they mentored him during filming of the underappreciated ''A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries." Merchant's recent death at age 68 came as a shock, Bradford says, and the young actor confesses that his grief is only somewhat lessened by the idea that ''Heights" contributes a fitting human-scale tagline to a career better known for its grand, ''Howards End"-style statements.

''I didn't want this movie to be among his last things, so it's hard for me to put much of a positive spin on that," Bradford explains. ''But to whatever degree we can dedicate this movie to him, I'm all for it."

Rookie director Terrio goes further, noting that he might still be a struggling graduate of Harvard and the University of Southern California film school, with one decent short (''Book of Kings") to his name, if Ivory and Merchant hadn't quickly nurtured him up from an assistant's position to running his own show.

''Ismail probably did me the greatest favor that anyone will do for me by just handing over the keys to the car and saying, 'I trust you to come back with it in one piece,' " Terrio barely manages through choked tears. ''I hope maybe this film will remind people of the independent, maverick side of his big personality, which managed to lift elephants just by sheer force of will."

In fact, it's this very spirit that ''Heights" quietly celebrates and demystifies, putting Bradford in a position to compare his own professional crossroads to that of the character he plays.

''Alec's whole trip is he's in a similar predicament to me," says the actor, who'll again challenge pigeonholers when he's seen as a blackmailing filmmaker in Don Roos's comic/chaotic ''Happy Endings" later this summer. ''He wants to maintain his artistic integrity, he wants to earn what he wants to do in life, and he doesn't want to get it by dating Demi Moore.

''Did I say that? I'm sorry," he pretends to apologize with a laugh. ''No intense offense meant, but I think it's a fair analogy to make."

Memo to Hollywood: Jesse Bradford's through with being just a teen idol, but he's only started being provocative.