In keeping with his bad-boy image, Sean Kanan, who got his first major film role as Ralph Macchio's nemesis in the 1989 film Karate Kid III, is still stirring up trouble. In his latest role as General Hospital's irascible A.J. Quartermaine, Kanan plays a white-collar rebel with a host of emotional problems, a history of alcoholism and a penchant for picking fights.

But Quartermaine is a lover as well as a fighter. And although Kanan says he doesn't feel like a sex symbol, his natural good looks and steamy on-camera love scenes with Brenda Barrett (played by Vanessa Marcil) contributed to his being named one of the hottest men on daytime television by Playgirl magazine. Kanan also appeared on the cover of the magazine's October 1993 issue.

Kanan, 27, who played the part of martial arts terror Mike Barnes in Karate Kid III, literally risked his life in his first major film role. Kanan had dreamed about starring in the film series since the first Karate Kid picture was released, and he was so thrilled to get cast over 2,000 people for his part that he wasn't about to let anything get in his way - not even a near-fatal accident while performing a stunt for the movie.

The stunt, which involved being thrown through a door, caused internal bleeding, and Kanan passed out several days later while on vacation in Las Vegas. "When I came to, I was on the way to the hospital and the doctors told me they were going to do everything they could to save my life, but they couldn't guarantee it," Kanan recalls.

But Kanan, who seems to tackle all his endeavors with the same intensity, begged the director not to recast his part. Kanan checked himself out of the hospital five days after his operation and immediately started reconditioning himself.

"They hired a stuntman and started teaching him all my karate sequences, and it was very frustrating for me to be on the sidelines, given that this guy knew no karate," Kanan says. "I said to myself 'There's no way in hell I've come this far and I'm going to let someone else do my stunts for me.' Fortunately, I was able to do them myself."

In the movie, Kanan is hired by Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) - who owns the chain of Cobra-Kai karate schools - to fight Macchio and take his All-Valley Karate Tournament title away. Macchio, who had decided not to fight in the tournament after his instructor Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) voiced his disapproval, is forced into entering after repeated harassment by Kanan. Macchio prevails in the end, however, landing the winning point after being brutalized by Kanan for most of the match.

"I beat him up the first 110 minutes of the movie, and then got my butt kicked in the last 15 seconds," Kanan laughs.

Kanan - who studied shotokan and shito-ryu karate at a school run by Black Belt Hall of Fame member Fumio Demura, and trained with stunt coordinator Pat Johnson for his role in Karate Kid III - says his martial arts background was one of the main reasons he got cast for the role of Mike Barnes. Since Macchio had little martial arts background, Kanan says the burden was on him to be careful not to hurt the star.

"A lot of times in my scenes I was attacking him, and I had to be very careful not to hurt him," Kanan remarks. "Also, since he doesn't have any training, I was real concerned about him hurting me."

Johnson, who remembers Kanan as very intense if somewhat immature at the time, says the two actors were perfectly cast for their roles.

"Macchio is not a physical person," Johnson says. "And I have to give Sean credit; he was very much in control during the karate fights, but was really on edge. The character he was playing was all of the things that Sean really was, and Macchio really thought he would let go. So there was a very real fear there that made the fight scenes come out good."

Kanan started boxing at the age of 12 on the south side of Youngstown, Ohio, which he remembers as being a rough neighborhood. He credits his mother with having the wisdom to steer him away from the "grittier" boxing crowd and into karate.

"I actually didn't want to study karate to start with," Kanan recalls. "My heart was fixed on boxing, because when I was growing up, I was enamored with Muhammad Ali and all the boxers I grew up watching. But as soon as I started taking karate, I was bitten by the bug and I loved it."

But Kanan never lost his love for boxing, and after being cast on General Hospital, he started training with Chris Steele, the soap's fight choreographer, who owns the Steele Town kickboxing gym in Venice, California. Kanan has had plenty of opportunity to show off his newly acquired kickboxing skills playing the impulsive Quartermaine who, unlike Kanan, relies more on emotion than intellect.

The intelligent and articulate Kanan, who is also an avid writer, says he contemplated a career in law, but acting has always been his first love. Because opportunities in his hometown were scarce, Kanan moved to Boston to further his show-business career. To appease his parents, he began studying political science at Boston University, but after landing a small part in the television series Spenser For Hire, Kanan realized he would ultimately have to move to Los Angeles to realize his childhood dream. He transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, as a pre-law student, but after appearing in several television roles and Karate Kid III, he quit school and concentrated full time on acting.

Despite his bad-boy image and sex-symbol status, the real Kanan takes life a little less seriously. He got his start in show business doing stand-up comedy, and won an amateur comedian contest in junior high school. He recently has performed in clubs like The Funny Bone in Pittsburgh and Dangerfield's in New York City. He claims stand-up comedy offers him a degree of balance in life, and he hopes to incorporate more humor into his soap opera character.

Kanan recently completed filming for his second Perry Mason TV movie, The Case of the Killer Kiss, and also finished a half-hour science fiction/drama segment for MTV called Dead at 21. He will soon star in the short film Oasis Cafe, an anti-capital punishment picture which he will also produce.

The soap star says he is happy to be getting the kind of exposure that comes from doing a daily TV show, but when the opportunities arise, he will be back in the movies.

As for fame, Kanan says it's a mixed blessing.

"In the beginning, it's novel and new and exciting, and it's flattering to have people admire your work," Kanan says. "But after a while, it's awkward because you always feel like people are watching you."

But as Kanan knows, in show business, it's better to have someone watching you than no one at all.