Vincent Ventresca

"I`m the king of mediocre series - plus a couple of pilots that didn`t even get picked up," laughs Vincent Ventresca, 34, the lanky former star point guard for Indianapolis` legendary Bishop Chatard High School. Being six inches too short and tearing knee cartilage kept him out of major college basketball programs, including at his alma mater Indiana University.

The good news is that he escaped the wrath of IU`s explosive coach, Bobby Knight. Even better news is that he discovered acting simply by dribbling a basketball at a local gym. Ventresca entertained the notion of becoming a high-school teacher like his father when Hollywood paid a call in Bloomington. The production company for "Hoosiers" (1986) - starring Gene Hackman as a small-town coach - was looking for former basketball players as extras. The slow, 6-foot-3, ex-prep hoopster thought he fit the bill.

"I checked it out and played some ball for them but didn`t wind up in the movie," he explains. "But the idea of being an actor suddenly interested me."

He immediately enrolled in an acting class at IU, then changed his major from social science education to theater arts during his junior year. The youngest of 11 siblings graduated with a bachelor`s degree in 1989 and, much to the relief of his beleaguered parents, headed straight for San Francisco. They didn`t really care where he went or what he did, as long as he went and did it.

The cool thing about being in a huge family is that one tends to have a close relative in every major city on the planet. As luck would have it, brother Dante was then the director of San Francisco`s downtown YMCA and easily provided a place to stay. Ventresca and a half-dozen actor friends from Bloomington immediately set to work on converting the facility`s aerobic room - a 1928 vaudeville house - into a legitimate theater.

Rich on experience and poor as church mice, Ventresca and his friends were forced to shut down the theater 18 months later due to a severe lack of attendance. When the deed was done, he promptly landed a national TV commercial for Visa credit cards and invested the $16,000 pay day in a series of classes with private acting coaches in New York. Broke again and having failed to get a talent agent in Manhattan, Ventresca moved to Hollywood a few months later to sleep on a friend`s couch for many a fortnight.

Three years later, a hustling agent made sure he had meat on his table on Friday nights - occasionally. The first major break was a three-month run in the drama series "Medicine Ball" (1995), followed by short or very short stints "Boston Common" (1996-97), "Prey" (1998) and "Maggie Winters" (1998-99). And now the laid-back and totally unaffected Hoosier is the star of his own drama-action series, "Invisible Man," (Fridays, 8-9 p.m., SCI FI), which is shot in San Diego and guaranteed at least 14 episodes for all to see.

Ventresca portrays Darien Fawkes, a small-time burglar facing a life sentence for his last bungled job, who is drafted into the service of an obscure, skeleton-staffed and underfunded federal intelligence agency after his murdered brother is responsible for having a special gland embedded in his brain.

"It sounds confusing when I try to explain the concept of the show, but it has it`s own perverse logic," he says, laughing. "When the Quicksilver gland in Fawke`s head is triggered by certain emotions, a strange substance is secreted through his sweat pores that renders him invisible. We`re all familiar with old movies showing the invisible man taking off his clothes, being wrapped in bandages and so on. We`re finding ways that viewers have never seen invisibility before."

The rangy actor is genuinely enthused about his new series, a rather rare experience for him.

"This show feels good, partly because it has certain retro qualities going back to `Batman,` `Mannix,` `Streets of San Francisco` and `Wild, Wild West.` It`s like we`re serving up a casserole of classic TV shows. Unlike some of my previous series - where we all went, `Oh, well, let`s finish out the order because it`s not going very far` - `Invisible Man` could run a long time. For the first time in years, I can`t wait to get to the set in the morning, even though I know I`m in for a 14-hour day."

On top of everything else, Ventresca and his former-schoolteacher wife, Dianne, are the proud parents of Benjamin James, their first baby, born in April.

"It`s very exciting. He eats a lot during the day and sleeps almost all night, with my wife doing most of the work. The only bummer of sorts is that I work a lot, which means I only see him when he is sleeping early in the morning and late at night. On weekends, we sit and stare at each other. It`s great!"

Life couldn`t get much better for the young couple, who have been together since the age of 14, were high-school and college sweethearts, and were married six years ago. A hefty influx of money that comes with starring in a series undoubtedly will change their lifestyle in the immediate future - including a new home and cars.

"My only worry is not loving this life too much," he muses.

"I don`t expect things to get much better than it is right now," he continues. "I love my wife, my boy is healthy, and I`ve got a job I really like. My parents come out and visit whenever they feel like it, and it isn`t unusual for a brother or a sister to drop in on short notice. I already have a sister living in San Diego who works for the Veterans Administration; my brother, Joel Ventresca, is a neighborhood activist who ran for mayor of San Francisco a while ago. He got 40,000 votes."

Despite having settled in all corners of the country, the Ventresca clan remains close-knit.

"There`s a creative streak in all of us, including the three sisters who are full-time moms. Dante moved back to Indianapolis and founded a theater company composed of both able-bodied and physically challenged actors. One brother writes screenplays; another sister is a teacher at the Chicago Art Institute. But we`re in all walks of life, which makes it fun to get together."

Ventresca`s feature film credits include "Romy and Michele`s High School Reunion and "This Space Between Us," plus the upcoming "Learning Curve" and "Madison" - which took him to Madison, Ind., about 100 miles south of his hometown.

"I drove home every weekend to see friends and family," he says. "I love Indiana, a beautiful, beautiful state, but there isn`t a whole lot of opportunity for actors there. But the funny thing is thinking about what would have happened if I had been a little bit better at playing basketball. I`m sure I wouldn`t have been an actor today."

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Eirik Knutzen