Marc Blucas has romanced a vampire slayer and died at the hands of ambushing Viet Cong. He's played a Secret Service agent keeping a very big secret from Katie Holmes and a firefighter who takes a nonlethal bullet from Tom Cruise.
His latest turn has him portraying the love interest of a tough, dangerous Texas lawwoman.
There's one role Blucas consistently reprises -- that of hometown hero. It's a comfortable fit, and he's played it so well before.
A star on Girard High School's 1988 and 1990 PIAA basketball championship teams and later the college teammate of current NBA All-Star Tim Duncan at Wake Forest University, Blucas returns to Erie for the Erie Times-News Varsity Cup awards Tuesday.
Now living outside Philadelphia in Bucks County with his wife, television journalist Ryan Haddon, and their three children, Blucas, 41, left behind the craziness of the West Coast but none of the craziness of an actor's life when he returned to Pennsylvania two years ago.
Blucas said the move made sense now that filmmakers have uprooted themselves from Hollywood to take advantage of tax breaks offered by cities like Pittsburgh, where a handful of films are being made each year.
His new pilot for ABC, "Killer Women," was filmed in Austin, Texas, but the series itself will be shot in Albuquerque, N.M., later this summer.
"Nothing shoots in Hollywood anymore, so actors are Gypsies again," Blucas joked during a recent phone interview.
A business major in college, Blucas was preparing to enter law school in 1995 when he hatched a plan to become a sports agent. His idea was to form a team of professionals, a "one-stop shop" that would help athletes with everything from financial planning to endorsements. The new venture was taking off and had caught the interest of Dale Earnhardt, NASCAR and the NBA.
"I was setting the table," Blucas said of his early work on the project, "but I thought it was going to be a really good meal."
At that point his career path made a dramatic turn, in part because of his athletic ability.
The makers of the movie "Eddie" needed an actor who could play basketball for a small part. Blucas knew he could play ball, but could he act?
He landed the job, and his acting career took off shortly afterward. His first role in a significant movie came in the 1998 film "Pleasantville," in which he played the aptly named Basketball Hero.
Since making the decision to act in his mid-20s -- woefully late by Hollywood standards -- Blucas has worked steadily in both TV and film. "Necessary Roughness," the USA Network series about the female psychotherapist for a pro football team -- Blucas plays her love interest -- recently was picked up for two more seasons.
So he'll acknowledge life is good, but not in a throw-care-to-the-wind, megastar sort of way.
"In this business most of us still go through unemployed periods where you don't know where your next paycheck's going to come from, and it's very stressful," Blucas said. "It's not all sunglasses and autographs. Not all the time, at least."
Blucas will serve as the keynote speaker at the third annual Varsity Cup awards banquet, honoring District 10's top athletes and teams from the 2012-13 academic year. The banquet will take place Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Ambassador Center.
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Q How's work?
Good. We've got two more seasons of "Necessary Roughness," and I just finished filming a pilot for ABC called "Killer Women." It was kind of cool because we shot in Austin and I finally got to act as kind of the action guy. I did all my own stunts, which really is owing to my athletic background.
The reality of acting is that most of these guys in Hollywood spent all of their high school years in drama classes, and they're not really great athletes. Obviously that wasn't the case with me, so people were almost mouth agape when I was doing the stunts.
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Q Your career has had a nice upward path.
I'm wildly lucky. I had to make up for a lot of lost ground because when I got out there, guys like Leo (DiCaprio) and Ben (Affleck) had been acting since they were 13, so they had a 13-year jump on me. It caused a lot of frustration when I was younger. It took awhile for me to be grateful for the life I had.
I owe a lot to my upbringing in Girard and the way it shaped me, because everything I do, I go hard. I went hard as an athlete, I go hard when I act and I go hard when I relax.
I've got a 19-month-old daughter and two stepkids, and life is great, but it's busy.
When I'm not working, I'll challenge anyone to the title of the busiest unemployed guy on the planet.
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Q Before you made a name for yourself, did you surprise anyone in pickup basketball games?
Yeah, all it took was one game and then the word got out, because Hollywood is basically middle school with money.
When I first went out there I played in a game with some actors in a celebrity entertainment league and I had like 51 points and five dunks, and people were like, "Who is this kid and where's his SAG card?"
They found out I played at Wake Forest, and after that I got asked to play in every traveling celebrity game. So it's true what they say, your past does inform your future.
Q Does the competitiveness you learned as an athlete serve you as an actor?
Honestly, it's a double-edged sword. Obviously that's where I got my commitment and passion and energy. You understand that all the repetition and practicing you do helps you get better, and that part's the same.
On the other side of it, most of the time as an athlete you're trying not to show any weakness. You know when I went to college I was usually the smallest kid on the court and I was trying to show no vulnerability. I was constantly trying to show how tough I was. But as an actor, probably the best attribute you can have is vulnerability. The best guys in Hollywood, the leading men, are the ones who can show they have a chink in their armor. It took a long time for me to train myself to show that convincingly and consistently. At first I could show it for one take, but you have to be able to do it for 12 takes, on demand. I finally got to the point, after a lot of work, that I was able to do that.
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Q Was it difficult making the decision to become an actor, especially after you had begun forming the sports agency?
I was a business major looking for the thing that was going to spark me. Luckily I found it, but there were a lot of cool failures along the way.
When I did "Eddie" I figured I could just tell my grandkids some day that I was in a movie. But I kind of caught the acting bug. People were telling me, "Go to LA. Meet these people. You have a natural talent."
It was like basketball all over again. I was excited. It was what I thought about when I went to bed at night and what I woke up to in the morning. I just said to the guys (at the sports agency), "Hey, I have a passion."
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Q You played with (San Antonio Spurs star) Tim Duncan at Wake Forest. Are you amazed he's been so good for so long?
It's really the longevity that's the most impressive thing. Anybody in the NBA is good enough to score 30 one night, but he's been doing it for 16 years. I tell him all the time, "I can't believe you're still doing this at 75 years old." What he does on the basketball court is remarkable, and he's got no jewelry, no posse, he's an intelligent, talented guy, and to me he's the best power forward in NBA history. I'm a little biased because he's a close friend of mine, but anytime I need motivation I turn on the TV and watch him play.
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Q Are your recollections of that 1990 Girard team still vivid or does that run seem like a million years ago?
A little bit of both. It does seem like a lifetime ago, but I can call up those memories in an instant and just get intense right away. I really had a one-of-a-kind, storybook high school basketball experience. I tell people if you didn't live through it you can't possibly understand it. Maybe go watch "Hoosiers" and you're close.
You know, we get to the arena for the state championship game and there are 4,000 Girard people already there with their bagged lunches. Not getting there when we did because they followed the buses, but they beat us there because they left work early to drive down. It was a remarkable time.
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Q Did you appreciate it then or did that happen later on?
I think we did. I think we all did. I think we were a pretty unique group. Everybody thinks their dog's the greatest. But when you think about it, Coach (Dick) Holliday put in an offense where there was never a play. We would pass the ball one way and that was one play, we would pass it another way and it was another play. We were unscoutable.
And the stars lined up for us. We had five starters who were all straight-A students. I'll never forget the TV interview Brooks Bowen did one time. The reporter asked him if he was ever jealous that Joe (Gette) and Marc get all the attention. And he said, "You know, they're role players, just like I am. Their role just happens to be to score." I thought that was an amazing answer, because when I heard the question I was terrified thinking about what he was going to say, and I have no idea how I would have answered it.
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Q Have you managed to follow some of Girard's recent teams? This year's team had a nice run in the PIAA playoffs.
Definitely. Yeah, they had a great run with that group, and Darrin (Mayes) did a great job. I always try to keep tabs with it, and you're always making comparisons. How good are they? Could they have beaten our 1990 team?
It's a special program and it means a lot to have been part of it. But, you know, it was a much different time, too. We didn't have cell phones or the Internet back then. Basically if you lived in Girard when I was growing up there were only three things to do -- hunt, listen to Bon Jovi and play basketball.
JOHN DUDLEY can be reached at 870-1677 or by e-mail. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNdudley.
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