Poor George Eads. Before landing the role of cocky CSI forensic investigator Nick Stokes, he endured 10 years of rejection, menial labor, and canceled shows. Meanwhile, his costar Jorja Fox simply breezed from megahits ER and The West Wing to CSI. ''Come on!'' Eads protests. ''You're supposed to suffer harder than that!''
The man knows what he's talking about. After earning a degree in public relations from Texas Tech University in 1990, Eads served as a sev- enth-grade drama teacher and a traveling salesman (''Rush-hour traffic, copier in the back of a Blazer, trying to sell it door-to-door -- it was horrible'') while attempting to penetrate the Dallas acting scene.
After an unsuccessful audition to utter one line on Walker, Texas Ranger (it was ''Walker, you should take a look at this''), he headed to L.A. in 1994, joined the staff at Gold's Gym (''I wiped down Minnie Driver's running machine, thank you very much!''), and ultimately scored a role as flesh-baring lothario Nick Corelli on The WB's 1996 nighttime soap Savannah, only to have the show fade out after one season. His career did take an upturn in the 1997-98 season when he played ER's Dean Powell, the medic who tempts nurse Hathaway, though the part called for just three episodes. His next big break was supposed to be an action series with Arsenio Hall called Skip Chasers. ''The people at Fox [the studio] kept saying, 'You're going to be a household name!''' Eads remembers. Chasers, however, didn't make the schedule. Then came a regular gig on CBS' South Beach comedy Grapevine, which was canceled after five airings.
Ironically, one of Eads' many disappointments led to his most career-affirming experience: After losing a role in the Showtime adoption drama The Baby Dance, Eads found a champion in the film's exec producer, Jodie Foster, who surprised him with a consolation phone call. ''I didn't know whether to call her Miss Foster or what,'' says Eads. ''She wanted to tell me what a bright future she thought I had and to stick with it. When I hung up the phone I said, 'That's it. Till I'm a silver-haired background guy, this is what I'm going to do.'''
Even now that Eads, who lives in L.A. with his yellow Lab, Maverick, has finally achieved Hollywood stability, he still finds himself shaken up over CSI's success. ''Every time I go to the set and there's a crime scene with crime tape around it and I'm the man getting out of the cop car and going underneath it, I just can't believe it,'' he says. ''I say to myself, 'Oh wow, calm down, breathe, and...action!'''
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