Ted McGinley is Back in Sequel to Popular Hallmark Channel Movie

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PASADENA, Calif. - For 12 years actor Ted McGinley never watched himself on screen. "I couldn't stand it. As a human being I feel very good about myself, but as an actor I said, 'OK, I guess I agree with people that I'm not where I should be," he says over lunch here.

"I don't strive to be OK. I want to be good. I want to aspire to great things. It was disappointing that I wasn't a natural at it. Now as I've been beaten up through the years I think I'm much better."

Actually McGinley, who got his start on "Happy Days" and spent six years as the Bundys' freeloading neighbor on "Married ... with Children," never intended to be an actor.

He grew up a surfer in Newport Beach, Calif., and worked as a lifeguard while he played water polo at USC on an athletic scholarship. His goal was to be a commercial land developer until his girlfriend coaxed a neighbor into taking some photos of McGinley and urged him to try modeling.

"I went to see (modeling agent) Nina Blanchard and I walked in with these crappy little pictures. And it was like going to see Oz. I walked in the door, 'No we don't see pictures over-the-counter. Send them in by mail.' Then I see some lady in the background, 'Wait a minute, let me see them. Come in here!' I was 19," he smiles.

"I never knew that job existed growing up. We had catalogs around and I assumed it was a guy who worked in the factory and they said, 'Put it on' and they took his picture ... . I've been so lucky that people have pushed me in places that I wouldn't have gone."

The agents liked what they saw and McGinley liked doing commercials. But in his senior year he learned that the athletic association permitted athletes to earn money only during vacation.

"Next thing you know I'm suspended and couldn't play my senior year," he says. "They wanted me to come back and play my fifth year but they wanted me to pay back my scholarship from my junior year, my senior year, and my fifth year and I was making pretty good money and was a lifeguard."

That proved a pivotal event in his life. "One of the biggest things that ever happened to me was that day, that moment of my life, where I said, 'What am I going to do?' But in the big scope of things, if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't be here today.

"Literally days later I was working in New York City, and I took off for Europe for the first time. It was the first time I got the whole purpose of history, so my life changed because of that. I became a much better student, and I never went back to school after I went to Europe and moved to New York. This acting thing kept coming back around. And I said, 'I guess this is what I'm supposed to be doing.'"

But McGinley kept fighting it. "Coming out of the pool I was a player and had a pretty good record for myself. Then all of a sudden I went into this business, and I was a joke. I was smart enough to sense it --- here I am going into a show with comedy, rhythms and timings that I had no clue about. And I'm going to work with people I used to race home to watch."

Given his background, McGinley, 50, was the perfect choice to play opposite Genie Francis as sportswriter King Danville in "The Note," which proved the highest-rated show on the Hallmark Channel last season. He's back playing Danville again in the sequel "The Note II: Taking a Chance on Love," airing Jan. 31.

"What I loved was that these are two wounded soldiers," he says. "This guy had his heart broken. His wife left him for someone else. He never got over that. He buried himself in his sports. That's probably the main reason she left him, he was buried there anyway."

Though he was determined not to, McGinley found his own true love at Burt Reynolds' Theater in Florida.

"I walked in the door and somebody hit me with a 2-by-4. We're in the same play and I never spoke to her. I just could not take my eyes off her, just could not. I was obsessed. I'd peek at her and see her looking to me. Finally on opening night she wrote me a card saying, 'Would you have champagne with me?' I wouldn't have spoken to her probably because once I say no, that's it. But we went out to dinner and that was it."

He and actress Gigi Rice have been married 17 years and have two sons, 15 and 11.

For all his angst about his acting, McGinley studied with drama coach Roy London. He has costarred in "Hope and Faith," "Dynasty," "The West Wing, "Young Doctors in Love," and even took a turn on "Dancing with the Stars."

"When I started on 'Happy Days' there were people who'd trained for years. I kept saying to God, 'Why me, I have no training?' So I got involved with a camp for kids with cancer ... where you go and live with these kids who are really sick - and I learned that they would call me for whatever was going on in their life. And I realized I'm changing their life. I'd be with them when we watched the show and it meant something to them. So I said, 'OK, this is why. This is what I do really well.' Now I'm really beginning to like my work better."