Yet now, Leon reshapes himself once more by taking to the stage. He co-stars in "Shackin' Up," a gospel play whose tour stops at Beaumont on Tuesday. Why so many transformations by an entertainer who early on played a Jesus-figure in the controversial music video "Like a Prayer" by Madonna, the queen of reinvention?

To please himself and fans, he said on a cell phone on Wednesday afternoon on his way to a Chicago theater. "I try constantly to surprise myself. I only have one life to live, and at the end of my life, I have to be happy with what I've done and feel good about my accomplishments," the New York native said.

"I've been really happy to consistently put out performances that capture people's interest. I can't change my face, I can't change my height, whatever. To do stuff you haven't done before, to be able to reinvent yourself, keeps them fascinated.

" Leon enjoys moving from one medium to another because the variety keeps him on his toes and helps him stay balanced, he said. The one-time shooting guard for Loyola Marymount University (who would go on to appear in the basketball movie "Above the Rim") trained as a theater major and of late has been returning to the footlights to flex his thespian muscles again. Leon Robinson broke into show business on films including "All the Right Moves" in 1983 (his premiere) and "The Flamingo Kid" in 1984 and branched out to TV within a few years, alternating between big-screen smashes like "Waiting to Exhale" and small-screen hits like "Resurrection Blvd.

" The nascent singer/songwriter created his reggae group partly as a way to give himself a voice: "Singing keeps me sane. It's the one thing I am doing that is me. I'm the writer.

I do the singing. It's me," he said. The band's debut album is called "The Road Less Traveled.

" Traveling by bus and plane across the country for a few months with "Shackin' Up," playing more than two dozens cities, is a grind, but Leon doesn't mind. The show satisfies him on many levels. First of all, he benefits from the relationship with its writer and director, the rising impresario Je'Caryous Johnson.

The 30-year-old is founder and CEO of Houston-based I'm Ready Productions, a force in the urban genre market, which focuses on black audiences. Celebrities from Vivica A. Fox to Robin Givens and Richard Roundtree to Brian McKnight headline its shows and hundreds of thousands of theatergoers attend them.

Besides seeing stars, patrons appreciate how these offerings divert and instruct, Leon said. In "Shackin' Up," the story revolves around attorney Chastity Moore (Elise Neal), who decides to move in with her longtime wealthy boyfriend after her father (Lenny Williams) wonders why she hasn't married him yet. Chastity's mother (Shirley Murdock) isn't thrilled her daughter is living in sin, and Chastity winds up feeling suffocated.

When the young couple's air-conditioning breaks down, things heat up more after hunky handyman Devon (Leon) arrives.