I had never seen Derek Jacobi without a beard. In 'Richard II', which I saw in London in 1988, and 'Becket' (1991) and in the film 'Henry V', he was bearded. (OK, he didn't have a beard in 'Dead Again'). Perhaps the beard gave him that patrician air, that quality of detachment. The clean-shaven man with blond hair and blue eyes in the War Memorial Opera House press room was anything but detached. Maybe it was the snub nose. Downplayed in the movies, it gives him a boyish quality that belies his age, which is 54.

"I stopped growing beards when they started coming in gray," he said ruefully in his beautifully modulated English actor's voice. As for the rest of his face: "I haven't got a profile. I've always wanted cheekbones--they're good for some things--but every year when I've asked Father Christmas for cheekbones, he hasn't brought me any."

If you don't know Jacobi from the films, or from 'I, Claudius", you can hear the full range of his voice tonight and Saturday at the opera house, where he is narrator for the San Francisco Opera's concert presentation of 'Christophe Columb', produced in honor of the Columbus quincentennial and the centenary of its composer, Darius Milhaud.

Jacobi has spent most of his career in the theater, for the same reason many fine English actors do: There's virtually no British film industry to draw them away. "Theater has been good for my own soul," he said, "but my bank manager doesn't approve...... You don't get famous in the theater." As proof: He had been a professional actor for 16 years before 'I, Claudius' came his way. Even then, he wasn't the first choice of the producers, who wanted Charlton Heston. (!) "They went down from there until they got to me."

But because he hasn't had what he calls in capital letters "The Big Film" yet, his American career has been erratic: After 'I, Claudius' some Broadway runs and then the Branagh films. American audiences don't know his theater work, which has been constant.

"I've been dogged with good luck," he says modestly. "In a profession where 85 percent of us are unemployed, I've been an actor who's worked. To be an actor, you need talent and an iron constitution. You have to be a physical and vocal and psychological athlete. But you do need the luck to give you the opportunities to show what it is you've got to strut."

In his time, he's done the epic roles: Hamlet (five times), Cyrano de Bergerac and Peer Gynt (back to back in rotating repertory).

"Several of the gray cells have dropped off the perch since I learned those roles," he said, shaking his head. "It's a great relief to do this (the narrator). I just READ it."