Moving Into America's Living Rooms
Each fall season brings a slew of new shows and even more new faces who have a chance at becoming stars. Here are some to watch:
Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow
ABC's "Alias," Sundays, 9 p.m.
Jennifer Garner's heard it before: a high-visibility part. Her breakout role. An inch closer to stardom. It was said about her characters in the short-lived series "Time of Your Life," films "Dude, Where's My Car?" and "Deconstructing Harry" and her recurring part in "Felicity" (where she met now-husband Scott Foley). But no explosion followed. So now, as the dynamic star of ABC's fall techno-thriller "Alias," Garner isn't getting her hopes up.
"I guess this could be my 'breakout role,' but I have heard that so many times now that I am a little more immune to it than I was a few years ago," she said. "While I am excited, I'm not banking everything on it."
In "Alias," Garner, 29, plays the intellectual and physically agile Sydney Bristow, a seemingly goody-goody graduate student who moonlights as an elite intelligence officer and remains stoic in the face of tooth-extracting torture.
"There are times when we overlap," Garner noted, comparing her role to her off-screen personality. "[Sydney]'s adventuresome, an achiever, she's not afraid, but she's good at keeping secrets--which I am horrible at."
A Houstonian transplanted to West Virginia in her youth, Garner fell into acting while studying at Denison College. With a healthy regime of classical theater, her mentor "took the West Virginia out of me," and Garner launched herself in the New York theater scene, where her first job was as an understudy in a production with Ron Rifkin--who, coincidentally, plays her superior in "Alias." ("When Ron was cast as my boss, I just died," she noted.)
Charlie Hunnam as Lloyd.
Fox' "Undeclared," Tuesdays, 8:30 p.m.
Almost three years ago, Charlie Hunnam made the jump from cozy BBC teen dramas to a key role as gay 15-year-old Nathan in "Queer as Folk," the edgy, graphic and much-talked-about British television miniseries. Within months, he became England's latest heartthrob, gracing covers of teeny-bopper and gay magazines alike.
Now the 21-year-old has moved from the U.K. to Hollywood--and into comedy--and is poised to have the same effect on Americans, this time as Lloyd, the British theater major in Fox's college sitcom "Undeclared."
