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The 1990 comedy Cadillac Man wasn't Robin Williams' best vehicle, but it sure kicked Lauren Tom's career into overdrive. With a top-volume voice and a knack for improv, Tom made the most of her role as a sassy dim sum waitress-and of ( the career opportunities it sparked. The movie led to an appearance on The Tonight Show, which led to a TV pilot, which didn't make it but did lead to a production deal with Twentieth Century Fox, which wants Tom to help foster Asian roles and actors on TV. On the big screen, the giggly Chicago-born Tom, who is of Chinese descent, can be seen this spring in the comedy Man Trouble as the wife Jack Nicholson dumps for Ellen Barkin. ''I'm making my major debut as a frumpy 45-year-old woman,'' groans the actress, who's in her late 20s. In the drama Mr. Jones, opening this fall with Richard Gere and Lena Olin, Tom gets younger: She plays a 20-year-old suicidal mental patient. Her TV deal might bring her lighter roles, but the actress, who protested the casting of British actor Jonathan Pryce as an Asian in Broadway's Miss Saigon in 1990, takes her ethnic mission seriously. ''I feel like now I'm in a position to really do something for Asian actors,'' she says. ''I had to do a lot of parts with an accent to get where I am.''
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