THE UNCOMMON MAYOR OF MALIBU

Most of the snickering about Martin Sheen, the honorary mayor of Malibu, Calif., has washed out to sea. Past titular mayors of Malibu have been required to do little more than preside over the annual charity chili cook-off. Sheen had more in mind. He assumed office by announcing, "I hereby declare Malibu a nuclear-free zone, a sanctuary for all aliens and homeless, and a protected environment for all life, wild and tame!"

It could have been the exclamation point, or the two "alls," but Malibu hasn't had as momentous a day since Johnny Carson, a local, met his fourth wife while strolling there on the beach. Carson's gag writers, resting up from Dan Quayle jokes, turned his "Tonight Show" monologue into a Martin Sheen roast. A liberal's bleeding heart was caught hemorrhaging.

Or was it? More than anyone in the film industry, Sheen has earned the right to talk about issues beyond the box office. He has been a regular on the protest lines at the Nevada nuclear-bomb testing grounds, where the real Apocalypse Now is planned. It was Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit jailbird, who helped radicalize Sheen about American nuclearism when the actor played a role in a 1981 film about one of the priest's civil disobedience trials.

Sheen has given more than a fair share of time and money to homeless people. His radicalizer this time was Mitch Snyder, who introduced Sheen to street life in Washington in 1986. The actor was playing Snyder in a television film, a part Sheen had trouble walking away from.

I interviewed him then, mostly to learn whether he was another Hollywood dabbler for whom social involvement meant issuing a press release on joining Hands Across America or doing a tree-hug seance with Shirley MacLaine. Sheen spoke of cowardice, his own. He wasn't doing enough for the poor and confessed to being spineless in challenging his country's militarism. He regretted "paying my taxes and buying more bombs with them ... I'm still in love with my life, my image, my money and all the things that keep us separated from God and ourselves."

There was nothing of a greasepaint grimace in this, nothing of playacting. That explains why in Malibu, after taking some initial ridicule, Sheen appears to have won support for his call to make trouble in paradise. The Los Angeles Times reports that, "What began as a silly sideshow contrasting Malibu's riches with the plight of the homeless has turned into a serious campaign to bring aid to the disenfranchised." The town's clergy were among the more than 300 citizens signing petitions backing Sheen's proposals. Both Malibu newspapers carried pages of sympathetic letters.

Is it for real? Or is homeless and anti-nuke chic about to hit Malibu? While letting events play out, we ought to raise another question about Hollywood celebrityhood. Why no uproar -- as the New York Times called the first reaction to Sheen's proposal -- when James Garner, Cybill Shepherd or Lauren Bacall takes up the cause of eating meat in commercials touting "real food for real people"?

Shilling for the meat industry, or any industry, seems such an ordinary menu for celebrities hungry for money or fame that their incantations rouse only shrugs, not uproars. You'd think that Lauren Bacall could refuse the call to promote hamburgers. Last month Linda Ellerbee, she of the knowing smirk about "the system," began huckstering for a coffee company.

In Malibu, an unincorporated beach village of 18,000 citizens whose incomes average $60,000, Martin Sheen is not an outside agitator. He's worse -- the inside agitator, a riskier role because he won't be going away, come hell or high property taxes.

Sheen's priest friend, Daniel Berrigan, had such places as Malibu in mind when he wrote: "Let us pray for good taxpayers, good citizens, people of law and order, good Christians. That they awaken from their sleep. For sisters, priests, monks, scholars, that passion inform their minds, compassion their discipline. Not merely hearers, but doers of the word. Let us not weary of praying. Nor of speaking and acting. While there is yet light."

Sheen is doing no more than that. He's an actor speaking, an actor acting. For real.

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