Jerry O’Connell played the fat kid in the 1986 Stephen King film, “Stand By Me,” but now, he has traded in the chubby belly for some muscle, shed his child-star image, and replaced it with a new one.

The new Jerry O’Connell is the all-American boy. He’s tall, outgoing and into sports. O’Connell is always clean shaven with his hair neatly combed, looking like he just stepped out of a barber shop.

Today, the 26-year-old is sitting in a booth at an International House of Pancakes in southern California, chatting on his cell phone between bites of lunch. He is looking forward to an appearance later this afternoon on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” to promote his new film, the big-budget sci-fi flick “Mission to Mars.”

Co-starring Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise, the movie takes place in 2020 and chronicles the story of a group of NASA astronauts who land on Mars and run into trouble.

For “Mars,” O’Connell and his co-stars faced the challenge of moving around the spacecraft while being harnessed from above, creating the illusion of weightlessness.

Though he loathes waking up at 6 a.m. every day on the set, O’Connell says he wouldn’t trade in his career for any other job.

“For ‘Mission to Mars’ I’m being hung upside-down for eight hours a day, I’m memorizing all this scientific dialogue, so yeah, it’s definitely work,” the NYU film school graduate says. “But God it’s such a cool way to make a buck.”

It wasn’t always so easy to score roles. Even after playing Vern alongside the late River Phoenix and Kiefer Sutherland in the successful “Stand By Me,” the actor wasn’t even close to fighting off the parts.

O’Connell hibernated for awhile, mostly concentrating on school.

He reflects on the film that first put him on the map, recalling a lecture as a freshman at NYU, watching a clip of “Stand By Me” with his fellow classmates. It inspired him to get back into the movie business.

“I thought to myself ‘Look at how this film that I thought was summer camp affected all these people,'” he says. “I really decided when I was a college freshman that I was gonna get back into it.”

O’Connell’s break came in 1995 as an NYU junior with hopes of breaking into acting again.

His agent sent him 100 scripts for TV pilots, but only two looked appealing — “Party of Five” and “Sliders.”

“My agent was like ‘Are you crazy? You’re gonna audition for everything and be lucky if you book a guest spot on one of these pilots,'” O’Connell says. “So I go audition for this ‘Party of Five.’ They fly me out to L.A., I meet the producers, I meet FOX, and I get it.

“I fly back home to New York,” he continues, shooting out rapid fire sentences. “I’m feeling like a million bucks, I booked the pilot that I wanted to book, I’m rubbing it in the face of my agency. Then I get a call that night that I get back, and they want me to fly back out to L.A. because an actor in another TV show [“Sliders”] just backed out.”

O’Connell got the part, and started shooting it a day and a half later.

Although his break came with television, it’s the movies that made Jerry O’Connell a household name.

In the Tom Cruise blockbuster “Jerry Maguire,” O’Connell struck audiences as football star Frank Cushman. “Scream 2” found the actor starring opposite Neve Campbell, and he landed a small part in 1998’s high school flick “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

“It’s weird being an actor because as you grow old, so do all your characters. You’re pretty much at the mercy of your physical appearance,” he explains. “The reason why I did the “Can’t Hardly Waits” and the “Scream 2s,” is because I was [in my early 20s], but now that I’m maturing, I’m starting to get more mature roles.”

“Mission to Mars” is strikingly different than the films that were the stepping stones of his career.

For the movie, he was excited to work with famed director Brian DePalma, whose credits include “Scarface” and “The Untouchables.”

“When you look at his films, every single one is an homage to a massive filmmaker a la Hitchcock, or a style of filmmaking. I knew he was going to make an homage to Kubrick and this sort of 1950s sci-fi thriller,” O’Connell says. “Honestly, I would be Brian DePalma’s personal pedicurist on his next film; I love his work.”

Hobnobbing with high profile actors and hot-shot directors, O’Connell has carved out quite a successful early career for himself.

As he pays the bill and exits IHOP with his cell phone still in hand, Jerry O’Connell couldn’t be more proud of success he’s had, and only hopes for more in the future.

“It’s very exciting man, because you’re an actor and you struggle and try and get a gig and then you hit it a couple times and then you can’t stay away from the work,” he says. “It really takes years to get in. Once you start, you’ve gotta stick with it. It might take five years, it might take ten. When the telephone bills are piling high and you’ve gotta get another job at a pizza shop, just stick with it. It’s definitely worth it.”

A far cry from playing the fat kid in “Stand By Me.”