A cross between Jack the Ripper and Winnie the Pooh: That's how actor Bob Hoskins describes Hilditch, his mild-mannered serial killer in "Felicia's Journey," the chilling drama that closes the New York Film Festival tomorrow night. 

Director Atom Egoyan follows his masterpiece "The Sweet Hereafter" with a movie about the relationship between a Birmingham caterer and a pregnant Irish lass (Elaine Cassidy) seeking the child's father in England. 

The Oscar buzz is already humming for Hoskins. Best known in the United States for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," this British version of Joe Pesci spoke with The Post about the film at Alice Tully Hall's Green Room after a "Felicia" press screening. 

Short, round, balding and so self-effacing he can be lost in a room of two, the working-class actor confessed he originally considered William Trevor's novel "Felicia's Journey" unfilmable. 

"I read the book when it first came out, and I didn't think you could make a film with it because basically I found the book very depressing." But Egoyan changed Hoskins' mind. 

The 56-year-old Londoner said in his softened Cockney, "Then I saw 'The Sweet Hereafter,' and it was a very depressing film. And I thought, I've got this script of this very depressing book by the director of this very depressing film - I've got to do this!" 

How hard was it to create the latter-day Bluebeard with a mother complex to shame Norman Bates'? Said Hoskins: "It was like trying to build a house with matchsticks and no glue." 

Hilditch is the neglected son of glamorous TV cooking-show host Gala (Egoyan's wife, Arsinee Khansjian). Lonely and unloved, he lures female victims with kindness before snuffing them. 

After he targets the Irish innocent Felicia, Hilditch finally faces his inner demons. 

Hoskins refused to pass judgment on Hilditch: "Evil? No character sees himself as evil," he says. "If I was to play Adolph Eichmann, I would have to play both the fact that he killed a lot of people, but he was also a total sentimentalist and took flowers to his wife every night." 

At the end of the day, how did the actor feel playing a monster? 

"Sick," Hoskins admitted. "If you're acting in front of a camera, you've got to think what the character is thinking. The camera can read your mind, so you've got to be thinking what he's thinking. And you've seen the kind of s--- he thinks all day!" 

Hoskins has a slew of upcoming projects already in the can. He plays the title role in Roger Spottiswoode's "Noriega: God's Favorite," Sancho Panza to John Lithgow's "Don Quijote" in the upcoming TV miniseries, and Mr. Micawber in "David Copperfield." 

Nominated for an Oscar in 1987 for his lovesick thug in "Mona Lisa," Hoskins may have a date with Oscar in 2000. 

But the hardworking actor is characteristically unimpressed with the prospect: "If it happens, it happens," he says. "If it don't, it don't. I just do the job."