Last year, when Young and Restless was looking to cast short-term attorney Patrick Baker, they had one non-negotiable, requirement: "Must be able to handle large amounts of dialogue." Not surprisingly, the role went to Gordon Thomson.

"If there's one thing I can do, it's memorize," laughs the soap vet, who spent over two years in the dialogue trenches as SANTA BARBARA's legendarily loquacious Mason Capwell. "That was a very demanding part. I had to do 35 pages a day, five days a week. By the end of the week, it would cut me down, it was so tiring. And then you'd take a deep breath and start again Monday."

These days, such verbosity is no longer an issue. As SUNSET BEACH's A.J. Deschanel, the actor now enjoys a more leisurely taping pace: "Nobody on this show," he observes, "has 35 pages a day. It's a lovely schedule, really, a much easier time for everyone."

In most other ways, though, playing AJ is a return to form for Thomson, who, after Y&R, SB, four months as an Egyptologist on RYAN's HOPE and seven years as DYNASTY’s terrible Adam Carrington, practically owns the trademark on sophisticated, suave schemers. "AJ is very smart and very mysterious," he notes, "but I think he's a nicer man than some of my other characters. Certainly nicer than, say, Adam.

With so many variations of one theme on his resume, Thomson has, at points in his career, feared being typecast. But in truth, it's hard to imagine him playing anything different - the comic buffoon, say - especially upon meeting him in real life. His alter egos' strengths are also his own: Thomson is every bit as well-mannered as AJ, as quick and clever as Mason. And in a roundabout way, he shares those characters' weaknesses, as well. Like Mason, Adam and the others, Thomson has had his own share of struggles that he hints at - and then carefully sidesteps - during interviews.

Certainly, he was anything but an overnight success. When the Canadian native enrolled in Montreal's McGill University at age 18, he was headed for a more traditional career - architecture, law or whatnot. "Deciding to become an actor was very late-coming," he sighs, noting that it took 17 years of struggle, mostly in Canada, before he was suddenly wandering around the Carrington Mansion every Wednesday night.

At the same time, he has had to deal with difficulties in his personal life. "My father died when I was 18," he begins. "He left home; it was sort of messy." Indeed, Thomson pere was killed while driving drunk with a girlfriend, prompting Thomson's mother to divorce him posthumously. The actor's one marriage ended in 1982, and he has remained notoriously guarded about his relationships ever since. The disappointments and damages have left him philosophical, and understanding of his characters' motivations. "I think we all have a dark side to us," he says. "I find that I can't trust sunny-natured people, people who are constantly sunny. I think that's major denial."

By his own account, Thomson lives a somewhat reclusive existence nowadays. he eschews team sports, partly because of a prohibitive leg injury and partly because he just doesn't like 'em. He'd rather tend to the garden outside his rented Encino, CA home, sharing his time with four dogs (one is deaf and senile, two arthritic) and a cat. He had another dog, Jack, who was put to sleep when even acupuncturists couldn't cure his stomach disorder.

Of course, living so peacefully makes learning lines a lot easier - even if AJ's soliloquies don't hold a candle to Mason's. "Thirty-five pages a day," he smiles, thinking again of the horror that he and Masons One and Two, Lane Davies and Terry Lester, all lived through. "You know, Lane and I finally met at an audition for a voice-over years ago," Thomson laughs. "And the first thing out of our mouths was, 'How did you learn all those lines?'"

ON THE RIGHT TRACK