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Andrew Shue
Here's the most important thing to know in order to understand the career of Andrew Shue: Acting is not his life. And despite six seasons as Billy, Melrose Place's lunkheaded heartthrob, it never was. Seven years after fleeing L.A.'s most explosive apartment complex, the tan 38-year-old sits on a Manhattan rooftop and explains that basically, he played us. ''Within four months on the show, I was thinking, This is a means toward other ends,'' he says. A roundup of those ends: Cofounded the youth service organization Do Something in 1993. Spokesperson for the 1994 World Cup. Played two seasons of pro soccer with the L.A. Galaxy. Jumped on the Internet bandwagon in 1999 and started ClubMom, an AARP-style membership organization for mothers that currently has 70 employees. Sits on the board of Survivor winner Ethan Zohn's African AIDS-awareness nonprofit, Grassroot Soccer. Raised three kids. Etc.
Dumping Hollywood for entrepreneurship and family was simple. ''My [older] sister gets nominated for an Academy Award and I'm on a TV show?'' He smiles, referencing Elisabeth's 1996 nom for Leaving Las Vegas. ''If you ask me, I'm on the junior varsity.'' But Shue is prepped to suit up again, teaming with Elisabeth and younger brother John to produce Gracie, a film based on the Shue family story: Back in the '70s, there was no girls' soccer team for Elisabeth to join...so she became the first girl in their district to play with the boys. The Shues have scored financial backing from Gatorade and Chrysler and have embarked on a casting search of close to 14,000 girls to play the titular soccer whiz. Will Shue's kids get cast in the family project? ''They think they will, but I'm not sure. [Attention] is a drug that will mess with people's minds. Well-known people's kids tend not to do very well.'' Shue will act in Gracie, but his role is tiny, and that's just fine. ''It might be exciting, but I didn't have it in my blood to act. I had my taste, and I had this thing that I could give back to the world. It's coming full circle with this movie.'' Shue pauses, a twinkle in his eye that could still throb many a heart if he wanted it to. ''It's not,'' he says firmly, ''my big triumphant return.''
