WINNIPEG - Ask Gary Burghoff about his long-time role as Radar on M*A*S*H* and it's a clear case of, um ... Radar love for the actor who's best known for his portrayal of the lovable medic.

Which isn't always the situation for TV stars who find themselves forever cast as the character they popularized.

"I'm delighted work that viable and that vital came across as viable and vital to the people who watched it," says Burghoff, in an interview from his Connecticut home.

"My approach was never to please the director or never to please the cameraman or never to please the studio ... but rather to connect with the people out there whom I thought I knew. To realize that I was successful -- that we were all successful in that effort -- is very gratifying."

The 56-year-old father of three looks "very fondly" on his Radar days, and acknowledges it has given him a leg up in other endeavors, such as his recent foray into wildlife painting. But for every door that opens for Radar, another one closes. In some corners of Hollywood, the role of Radar is stamped on Burghoff like a scarlet letter.

"I would like to have had more film roles," he admits, attributing his lack of feature work to the movie industry's inability to see him as anything but good, old Radar.

"Film, that was my childhood dream. I spent all those Saturday matinees in the movie theatres. I probably saw every B film and every A film that was ever made. I'm a film buff. I would like to direct it, I would like to produce it and I would like to act in it.

"I've never cared about being a star. It's that feeling of communicating with so many people on a universal basis.

"But I don't feel badly about it (his career path)," he continues, "like I say, the good Lord gives you what you need when you need it."

Which, for Burghoff, has meant spending more time at home with his family, brushing up on an old talent -- painting -- and winning roles in stage and TV productions.

The theatre, Burghoff says, is more open-minded than film because it's the one genre that thrives on actors taking risks.

"It allows you to play something other than what you are best known for," says Burghoff, who won an Emmy Award in 1976 for his turn as Radar. "Jamie Farr was asked recently would you go back (to M*A*S*H*) and he said, 'Oh sure, we could play the patients now.'

"M*A*S*H* is a wonderful epic in my life ... but when I left, I wanted to get on with it and flesh out other characters, which is what theatre has allowed me to do. I couldn't possibly play an 18-year-old Radar again, so I'm playing a 47-year-old Barney Cashman in Neil Simon's Last Of The Red Hot Lovers.

"He's delicious, he's wonderful. I love playing him," he says, of his Cashman character, a middle-aged man who is happily married to his high-school sweetheart but wants to have an extra-marital fling before life passes him by. "He's not at all like Radar."

Burghoff may not be in pictures as he had hoped but he is enjoying success on several fronts, notably as host of a new PBS series called Pets, Part Of The Family and as a wildlife painter. Named Wisconsin's top student artist at age 16, he didn't starting painting again until 1993, when he took a hiatus from acting to spend more time with his kids.

"I just started painting and before I knew it, people wanted to buy my work," he says. "I paint what I love. I don't try to please the viewer. I try to paint the beauty that I've seen in life, and it's always surprising and delightful when other people see the beauty that I tried to lay down on canvass."

Burghoff has 17 limited edition prints for sale in galleries throughout the United States, and is three paintings into a series that will see him capture on canvass a once-endangered species from each state. A nature buff, Burghoff has deliberately chosen birds and animals that are making a comeback due to conservation efforts.

"We're very cynical and we always focus on the negative. What I'm trying to do is paint the positive, to show that we are actually making headway. We can make a difference and we are making a difference."