Religion and soul-searching put actor Eric Close on the right path

UNANSWERED PRAYERS. 9 tonight, Lifetime.

LOS ANGELES - Actor Eric Close could easily have slipped from the straight-and-narrow. But life took him in the other direction. In fact, the star of "Now and Again" and "Without a Trace" remembers that he wanted to be a director but, again, fate interrupted his best-laid plans.

"I was a wild kid in high school," he said recently. "I liked to get crazy and be rebellious and go to parties and do all that kind of stuff.

"I wasn't a great student, and I think my mom hoped I would find something. I was bored easily, and we all know that boredom and teenage years is not a good thing. I played a lot of sports and we skied and were always exposed to the arts. I think she thought this would keep me from going to the dark side."

In the end, it was Close who found the right path. "I made a commitment to be a Christian in my life and that was a major change in my life, because I was going down one road, hanging with the wrong crowd, and I happened to be going to a private Christian school in San Diego," he said.

"And I heard about this person, Jesus of Nazareth, and what he was about. And I was drawn to that. I thought, 'That's someone I could follow as a leader.' I was 13, but I went off into my [wild] teenage years."

That lasted until he graduated from the University of Southern California. "I knew I wanted to be an actor but I was on my own. I told my parents, 'You've taken care of me all my life, helped me through college. You've been awesome, but now it's my turn to be my own man.' "

Though we know him best as the good guys on his two TV series, Close has also played serial killers and rapists. Sometimes he's questioned whether those jibe with his Christian outlook.

In fact, in his latest role as the married man suffering a midlife crisis in "Unanswered Prayers" (based on Garth Brooks' song), he negotiates some graphic love scenes, for which he used to feel guilty.

Now he says, "I just feel that God gave me a certain gift, and that was to go out, do storytelling and be an actor. And my responsibility with that gift is to do the best job possible and to recreate real life. The majority of the world - including myself - we all have problems and difficulty in life, and life's messy. But there are great rewards in life, too. I feel that my job, when I play a character, is to play it as true as possible."

The father of two daughters, 12 and 9, Close said that striking out on his own was a sort of Eric's excellent adventure, constantly seeking jobs and squeezing in auditions. He worked as a proofreader of legal documents, a market researcher, an inadequate bartender, a waiter, the background of a karaoke video and a bank teller.

While he was at the bank, he'd rush off to auditions during his 45-minute lunch hour. "I would literally be running out of the building pulling my tie and jacket off, unbuttoning my shirt and pulling my belt off. By the time I got to the car I had no shirt on, no jacket, I was kicking my shoes off, drive out of the parking lot. As I got out, pull my pants off and in the back are the clothes for my audition. So I'm driving down the freeway getting dressed in my ratty, convertible car. I'd have to ask the other actors if I could go first because I had to get back. On the way back, the same thing. By the time I got into the bank I'd be tying up my tie. It was just crazy."

Close, 43, spent a year in Madrid studying, with a side trip to Budapest, where his mother was born. He met another American at the airport in Vienna who was also traveling to Budapest. They stayed in touch and when Close attended his friend's wedding in Dallas, he met his future wife, Keri, a clinical social worker.

"At that point I took a real, long hard look at myself and said, 'Do I like the person I am?' And I was starting to think about marriage and the type of person I'd want to be married to. Then I had to ask myself, 'Would that person find me the kind of person they'd want to be married to? How would they feel about me? Would they like me? Would they think I was their ideal person?' and I said, 'I don't think so.'

"Then I met this guy who was doing a play and he invited me to his church, an African-American church in Altadena, and I had a great time there. It was very charismatic and the music was fantastic and I felt loved there. And that started my journey. I felt it gave me a purpose and a grounding in life, and has directed a lot of my decisions."