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WE WERE told Will Corno looked like early vintage Al Pacino.

Like Al Panic In Needle Park Pacino.

Yeah, right. Everybody including my hunky plumber is supposed to look like Al Pacino. But this time, they were not delusional.

Will Corno actually does look like Pacino. Even without his hand. Corno plays John Sansmain (French for without hand), a Jack The Ripperish character on an upcoming episode of Witchblade.

Check him out for yourself tonight at 10 p.m. on Global, when Corno guests on Blue Murder as David Radke, a rat in black leather. He is a heroin addict accused of stuffing his wife in an air vent and killing her father for money.

What's such a nice guy doing in sicko parts like these? And he's so convincing.

"I was rehearsing for a film with my roommate, an Edward James Olmos film, and I didn't get the part," he recalls ruefully over the first of three coffees at Kalendar Koffee House on College St.

"Some of the dialogue was 'I didn't kill her. I love her.' It's 9 p.m. and I have my p.j.'s on. There's a knock on my door and lights are flashing outside. I look out and there are three police cars.

"I open the door and they say, 'Can we come in? There's been a murder. Someone overheard someone saying, 'I didn't kill her, I love her.'

"I said, 'Hello, that's my dialogue.'

"We had a laugh about it. The officers said they'd always wanted to be actors - they even knew Maria Del Mar (co-star of Blue Murder). Apparently the guy downstairs called the police. He felt so bad, he bought me a bottle of champagne."

Corno also played a baddie in the films All The Fine Lines and Nothing To Lose.

About the latter he quips, "there was a lot of white stuff on my nose - and it wasn't anthrax."

He made his film debut in the 1995 indie Jigsaw, which he co-produced and starred with ex-veejay Erica Ehm.

"I played a boxer," he says, mulling over a still from the film. "The lighting is funny. I look like Charlie Chaplin."

His TV credits include Total Recall, Nikita, FX: The Series, PSI Factor, Forever Knight, Top Cops. He's played a Roman Gladiator in Relic Hunter.

Corno has gone from homicidal to biblical. In The Promise, one of the Bible Stories Anthology series produced by Big Star Motion Pictures, he plays Itzchak, brother to the apostle Judah, played by Nick Mancuso.

"Judah believes in Jesus and Itzchak believes in the Scriptures," Corno qualifies. "My character believes that Jesus is a false Messiah. We've shot one episode and will shoot another.

"The first biblical thing I did was being an altar boy at 12," he muses. "I got to go to free hockey games - the priests had gold seats back then. I went to St. Mike's high school, a private boys school, and played hockey."

He still plays hockey two or three times a week.

"I have eight boxes of hockey cards," he enthuses. "I have a Wayne Gretzky rookie card that's worth $600. It's framed and autographed and on my wall."

How Canadian is that? Corno is first-generation Italian; his mother still doesn't speak English, he says. Imagine how perturbed she must be watching her son's characterizations.

"She went to a play and left when it was half over," he laughs. "She didn't know it was over. In Witchblade, I kill a woman and bury her bones in the ravine, so my mother won't be watching that. But my mother could watch the bible thing.

"I speak a southern dialect, but my Italian is atrocious," he confesses. "My mom says she doesn't understand English but when I do something bad, she understands. My dad worked as a barber. He wanted me to be a Phys Ed teacher, but I wanted to play in the NHL."

He has two sisters; one is a professor.

"When I told my dad I wanted to be an actor, he asked, 'Are you going to be like Marcello Mastroianni?' I should be so lucky."

Corno has been acting for 10 years or so. He started off studying kinesiology then chucked it all and, in 1991, went to New York to study acting at Neighborhood Playhouse.

"It was awesome," he recalls. "We hung around the Vanderbilt YMCA in a group of four or five actors from Minnesota, New York, Kentucky. We'd tell stories of (alum) Robert Duvall, Steve McQueen ..."

He is also a Ryerson Theatre School grad.

"My first acting gig was a Carlsberg beer commercial and I was playing hockey," he recollects. "It is set in a bar and we're the hockey game on the TV. I thought I'd be getting all kinds of air time but there I was, this postage stamp figure up there."

He is in the process of writing the film script for Johnny M., which he describes as "Rocky On Ice."

"He's a hockey player," Corno says. "We need to go back to movies that pull on the heartstrings. I'm tired of violence; I like films like Brothers McMullen."

Of course he'll star in it.

Bottom line, like any actor, he just wants to work.

"I just want to make a living," he stresses.

And not be busted by cops while rehearsing.