Mapa the World, Ma

Some actors just don't fit into Hollywood's cookie-cutter roles. But if they stick around long enough and keep doing their thing, they can eventually be embraced for their originality, and get a chance to reshape the roles they get to fit their outsized personalities.

Take Alec Mapa, for example. A short, impish, epicene Filipino now in his 30s but still looking Peter Pan-ishly ageless, he's best known for playing the original "M. Butterfly" and for a series of solo shows about the ups and downs of his career and his life (two of them, presented earlier this year under the grouped title "Mapa Mia," are nominated separately for Ovation Awards -- yes, Mapa is competing with himself).

"People are starting to incorporate my creativity now that they know what I do," said Mapa, who turned a receptionist part on UPN's "Half and Half" into a recurring role by basing his nonchalant demeanor on his own temping days of yore. "And as long as you're working, it attracts other people who are interested in what you do."

Mapa wasn't even going to read for "Connie and Carla," Nia Vardalos' new movie about two women (Vardalos and Toni Collette) who go into hiding by disguising themselves as West Hollywood drag queens (for release next spring). "I so didn't need to be in drag again," quipped Mapa, who apart from "Butterfly" has been called upon to don the eyeliner on other occasions. The caliber of the cast -- and of his co-queen, Stephen Spinella -- convinced to try for a part that, he says, was "pretty thinly conceived." He went in and read the lines as his own Filipino grandmother might; he later found out from Vardalos that when she wants to do "ethnic," she conjures her inner grandmother, too.

Next up for Mapa is Bravo's improvised show about couples in therapy, "Significant Others," (not be confused with the short-lived 1998 drama featuring a current ABC star). Mapa plays the partner of Patrick Bristow -- a pairing that seemed obvious, Mapa said, when producers put the two together and "we wouldn't shut up."

And that's the lesson for today, kids: Just keep talking and eventually they'll hear you.