As they watched the lush, sensuous Strictly Ballroom, millions of women undressed Paul Mercurio with their eyes. In his follow-up movie, Exit to Eden, they won't have to work as hard.

"No big deal," says the thirty-one-year-old Australian actor, smiling, when asked about nude scenes in which he submits to the sexual commands of a dominatrix played by Dana Delany. (The movie, directed by Garry Marshall, also stars Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O'Donnell.)

But then, this isn't the first time he's appeared before the public in the buff. An acclaimed dancer/choreographer in Australia, Mercurio has paraded his physique in front of admiring audiences for years (he once danced naked in the ballet Death in Venice). Now, though, the stakes are higher. Exit to Eden--an erotic comedy based on a steamy Anne Rice novel-could make him an international sex symbol.

He certainly looks the part. With long, almost shoulder-length hair, a couple of days' growth on his boyish face, a gold ring in each ear, and puppy-dog brown eyes, Mercurio is a walking definition of a heartthrob--the type of man women want to mother and be seduced by at the same time.

He returns the compliment by noting that all the important people in his life are women--his manager, agent, older sister, wife Andrea, and two little girls, Elise and Emily. He just gets along with them better. There's nothing he likes more "than being bathed in love by my kids and my wife."

Right now, his daughters are a little miffed with Daddy, however. This is the third birthday Mercurio is celebrating away from his family, putting the finishing touches on Exit in Los Angeles. "I don't like to be away from the girls for too long," he says. "They're growing so fast.

As is his career. "In two years, the possibilities have broadened; so much has happened," he says.

Getting the starring role in Strictly Ballroom was a total accident. He was asked to contribute choreography to the film and wound up with the lead. Ballroom went on to become the biggest-grossing film ever released Down Under and was also a huge hit in the United States. Overnight, Mercurio went from being a respected member of the dance community to one of Australia's biggest screen stars.

"It's gotten so that going out and having a quiet meal with my wife is difficult." But, he adds, "being a romantic idol is very enjoyable."

Besides launching a film career and sharing the responsibilities of parenthood, Mercurio also raised private and public money to start his own dance company, the Australian Choreographic Ensemble, which has skyrocketed to poplarity both at home and abroad.

He's travelled a long way from the shy nine-year-old who, one day, pointed up at the movie screen and said to his mother, "I want to do that." It wasn't Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly who made him want to dance; it was Elvis--virile, sexy, dressed all in black--gyrating to "Jailhouse Rock." But for a young boy in Perth, Australia, becoming a dancer still took guts. "I got all the taunts-sissy, 'poof,'" he recalls. "Kids were always trying to fight me."

Dance is the vehicle Mercurio has always used to enlighten audiences, "to show that a man doesn't have to be gay to be sensitive, that dancing is about being who you are and expressing yourself emotionally. I don't want to sound poetic, but dancing takes you to another level."

He hopes to continue breaking down prejudices through his acting. When Strictly Ballroom opened and people asked him when he'd learned how to act, he responded, "I've been onstage since I was nine. If you're not an actor when you dance, , . no one's going to watch you. Similarly, actors use a degree of dance in their work--it's all about rhythm, timing, movement."

Because of Strictly Ballroom, and now Exit to Eden, Mercurio is bracing himself for what Aussies call the Tall-Poppy Syndrome ("When you get big, certain people in the community can't wait to cut you down").

His dance-performance days are numbered, he knows, but dance will always be in Mercurio's life. He's currently writing a movie-partly autobiographical-about a dance company, but first, he'll star in Back of Beyond, in which he plays a mechanic who returns from the dead to repair his motorcycle: "People pass through his garage, and he fixes their cars and also adds a spark plug to their lives."

Sounds tailor-made for the Aussie invader who's firing up I the American movie scene.