IT'S not just a weird coincidence that John Cusack lands unconventional roles. This is an unconventional guy, after all.

And there is one role he point blankly refuses to play - the part of the Hollywood star clamouring for the attention of the press, forcing his way on to our television screens where some interviewer with as much punch as a limp lettuce leaf asks a series of inane questions, and scrambling to be the biggest at the box office.

Cusack hates fame and all its trappings. And he doesn't have much time for those who do. ''There's guys who will go to a cat's funeral if the press is there. They just want to get photographed.''

But Cusack is now 35 years old and his unconventionality doesn't come as a surprise (although discovering he's a strapping 6ft 3in does). It's the way he's always been.

This is the guy who knocked back Woody Harrelson's role in Indecent Proposal and a part in Apollo 13 (although he did later accept a part in the blockbuster Con Air, admitting he did it for the money, but that is the exception, not

the rule).

Even at the tender age of 17, when starting out in the business, he took a different road from those around him. Cusack was part of the famous Brat Pack, the teen stars who took the film world by storm. Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald, and Anthony Michael Hall all faded into near obscurity. But after the release of Class (1983) and Sixteen Candles a year later, Cusack remained on the periphery of the Brat Pack and side-stepped their demise.

Perhaps his family background gave him an idea of how to play the Hollywood game. The Cusack clan (with the exception of school teacher mum Nancy) is all involved in acting: father Dick is an actor and film-maker, and Cusack Jr's siblings -Joan, Ann, Bill, and Susie - are thespians.

While still at elementary school, John Cusack was already a member of Chicago's Piven Theatre Workshop. By 12 he had several stage productions under his belt.

After his foray with the Brat Pack he made his final adolescent movie, Say Anything . . . (1989), followed by The Grifters, a dark film that seemed to set Cusack's course down the road of unconventionality.

To further the cause of avant-garde stage work, he set up his own theatre group, The New Criminals, in 1988, and four years later teamed up

with a couple of high-

school friends to launch

his own film company, New Crime Productions.

New Crime's first venture was the comedy Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), in which Cusack co-starred with Minnie Driver (a real-life romance was the result). This was followed with Clint Eastwood's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Jack Bull (1999), Pushing Tin (1999), and Cradle Will Rock (1999).

And with his liking for the offbeat, Cusack was the natural choice for the bizarre Being John Malkovich (1999), in which he plays a frustrated puppeteer who stumbles across a portal into the brain of actor John Malkovich. Then there have been High Fidelity (2000), America's Sweethearts (2001), and Serendipity (2001).

Cusack's not disappointed that his movies (with the exception of Con Air) have not been big box-office hits. That's the way he likes it.

''I've seen things that I've turned down, or wasn't offered, that were very successful movies at the box office. But I saw them and didn't like them.

''I'm at peace with what my tastes are. How much money does one person need?''

John Cusack stars in

Being John Malkovich, Sky Premier, 8pm.