New York Daily News
September 3, 2003
'Alias' star spies new identity for show
by Nancy Mills
BURBANK, Calif. - Is "Alias" turning into "The X-Files"?
When we last saw ace agent Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), she had gone to a CIA safe house in Hong Kong and discovered that she'd been missing for two years! Her boyfriend and CIA handler, Michael Vaughn, was now married!
What happened?
Had there been an alien abduction?
That's what everyone wanted to know from Victor Garber, who plays inscrutable CIA agent Jack Bristow, father of Sydney, on the hot ABC series.
Garber was trying to promote his new movie, "Home Room," in which he plays a detective investigating a Columbine-style high school massacre. But we begged him for some clues about what happens this season to his sexy TV daughter. ("Alias" begins its third year on Sept. 28.)
"We're not double agents anymore," Garber finally revealed on the "Alias" set in Burbank. "SD-6 is gone, so we're CIA, and we're all trying to get the bad guys.
"We're trying to broaden the appeal for people just tuning in, so the show will be a little more straight-ahead. The first episode picks up two years later, so in a way it's a fresh start for everybody.
"But don't worry. It's still complicated."
The series could be a big winner at the Emmy Awards on Sept. 21.
"Alias" has 11 Emmy nominations, including nods for Jennifer Garner, Lena Olin, who plays Sydney's KGB-agent mother, and Garber.
Father and daughter will announce one of the awards.
"I told them, 'I'll be happy to present with Victor Garber,'" Garner said on the set as they shot the third episode of the new season.
"Where will we go for dinner after the Emmys?" Garber asks her. "What about Pinot Hollywood?"
Then to a reporter, he adds in a loud voice, "Jennifer knows this is the most important thing in my life right now."
Garber, 54, may or may not be joking.
After a long and distinguished Broadway career, he is finally getting some attention in Hollywood.
His new movie, "Home Room," co-starring Erika Christensen and Busy Philipps, opens on Friday.
"'Home Room' is about how we have to blame someone, prosecute them and then it's over," Garber says. "But life isn't like that.
"I can understand his anger, his frustration, his impatience," he says of the detective character he plays. "You should drive with me sometime."
Garber says his cool exterior masks an interior turbulence.
"I've been to some very good therapists," he says. "I had a lot of confidence as a young man that I don't have now."
It's been a long road to Hollywood. Garber quit his London, Ontario, school after ninth grade and moved to Toronto to be an actor. Folk singing led to playing Jesus on stage and in the film "Godspell." Its failure kept him off the big screen for nearly 20 years.
"I missed the young leading-man era because I couldn't get any movies," Garber says. "So I stayed busy in the theater" - getting Tony nominations for "Damn Yankees," "Lend Me a Tenor," "Death Trap" and "Little Me."
Playing the ship's regretful designer in the film "Titanic" raised his profile.
Then came a key role in "Legally Blonde" as Reese Witherspoon's lecherous law professor.
"Victor has real power and magnetism without having to push it," "Alias" director Jack Bender says. "He can be very subtle, yet menacing or commanding."
"Maybe I grew into myself," Garber says.
© Daily News, L.P. 2003
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