Career
He broke into show business during college. His first major role was on the daytime soap opera Ryan's Hope, in which he played Rick Hyde from 1984–1987. During his last year on the show, he received a Daytime Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Young Man in a Daytime Drama Series". Also during his time on the soap, Show dated fellow Ryan's Hope actor Yasmine Bleeth. Hyped as the series' leading heart-throb, he even had a pin-up poster issued during the series' run but later became dissatisfied with acting in soaps and went to London in order to improve his craft. Returning to the US in the late 1980s, he landed occasional primetime television acting jobs though feature films proved elusive (although the producers of Thelma and Louise considered him for the role that Brad Pitt played in the film).
Show's appearances on television attracted the attention of producer Aaron Spelling, who felt he had star potential and decided to cast him as Jake Hanson on a few episodes of the popular series Beverly Hills, 90210 in order to spin off the character as the lead in his next series Melrose Place. Debuting with much fanfare (Show was on the covers of both TV Guide and People immediately after the series' debut), the series' ratings in its first season were not up to expectations, and the show was revamped in the middle of the first season from an episodic straight-laced drama format to a melodramatic soap opera serial format in the tradition of Dynasty, one of Spelling's earlier hits. The series made Show one of the most popular and best-known actors on American television during the 1990s. He also played Jake in a guest appearance in the pilot of the Melrose spin-off Models Inc., making him the only actor to play the same character on the first three shows in the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise. During his time on Melrose Place, Show also appeared on an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Laura Leighton.
In 1997, Show, Laura Leighton (an off-screen girlfriend of Show's for a period), Doug Savant, Courtney Thorne-Smith and Marcia Cross left Melrose Place, which led the show into a major decline. It was cancelled two years later, though Show later regretted his decision to leave, despite his dislike of the scripts during his final season.
He has since starred in a number of television movies, including Blessed Assurance with Cicely Tyson, Between Love and Honor with Robert Loggia, and Homeland Security with Tom Skerritt and was one of the leads in the short-lived Fox Network supernatural drama Point Pleasant in 2005. He made a guest appearance for three episodes in HBO's acclaimed series Six Feet Under in 2002, and in 2006 he guest-starred on two episodes of the ABC Family show Beautiful People, along side former Melrose Place co-star Daphne Zuniga.
In 2007, Show appeared in three episodes of the FX show Dirt, playing a closeted gay action movie hero, Jack Dawson.
In 2008, Show starred in the short-lived CBS summer drama series Swingtown as an airline pilot, Tom Decker. Show was also featured in a recurring role in episodes of Private Practice in the 2008-2009 season. He recently starred opposite Jenna Elfman in Accidentally on Purpose, his first sitcom. In the 2010-2011 season, he appeared in the recurrent role of Michael Sainte, the Goji Guru, on the HBO series Big Love.
He has acted in a number of stage productions. In 1990, he played the lead in an adaptation of On the Waterfront and after his stint on Melrose Place he appeared in a production of The Glass Menagerie. He was on Broadway in 1999 playing a doctor in Wit.
In 2012, he starred in the movie The Possession, directed by Ole Bornedal, along Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick.
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)