THE GHOST WHO WALKS Billy Zane, of Greek origin, grew up in Chicago. At 13 he had already started making movies on his father's Super 8 camera. One of his artistic endeavours resulted in him recruiting some city workers to chase his sister, Lisa, down the beach with a bulldozer. Reason: he wanted to recreate a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest. The incident sums up his personality completely. Self-assured, suave, adventurous. It's been a long time since then. And finally, a long awaited breakthrough has come about. Landing a role as The Ghost Who Walks has been a boon for Billy, who has been a little known name in the industry for 12 years. Ever since he left high school as a young lad of 18, he knew he wanted to be a part of Hollywood. He promised his father that if he didn't find work in a year he would enroll in college. Within weeks Billy had landed a role in Back to the Future. It was only as one of Biff's goons, but the film did turn out to be the biggest money-earner of 1985. Most of his roles so far have portrayed him as the bad guy. Zane admits that many of his bad guy roles (like in Sniper and Posse) were consciously chosen to make an impact with the audience -- because, says Zane, darker roles are more attention grabbing than squeaky clean ones. And so it proved to be with 1989's Dead Calm, in which he played a psycho holding Nicole Kidman as hostage on a boat for days. His performance was so intense that people started calling him " the next Marlon Brando". Not surprising considering his handsome and intense looks. The combination led to him landing the romantic lead in Orlando a few years ago. And now it has landed him a role which could turn out to be the most important in his career. As the exotic Phantom, Billy Zane has suddenly become very high profile. He worked hard for the $ 45 million movie, pumping iron for a  year to develop the muscle required to give shape to the purple, skin-tight suit that is the signature of The Ghost Who Walks. Time will tell whether he can sustain his run of good luck, and live up the the high expectations of filling Marlon Brando's shoes.