Greg Evigan returns in Hallmark Channel's 'Mail Order Bride'

McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT) - Most people remember Greg Evigan as the swell fellow from "B.J. and the Bear" or "My Two Dads." But no more Mr. Nice Guy for him!

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The one-time teen-idol has been going for the throat lately, and it's a beautiful sight. On Nov. 8 Evigan shows up as the devil incarnate on the Hallmark Channel's "Mail Order Bride." As a ruthless con man, he sports the right combination of menace and rue.

The character couldn't be more different from him. Evigan's a down-to-earth guy who's shattered every Hollywood stereotype. He's been married to the same woman for nearly 30 years and is the father of three kids, ages 27, 25 and 22, who still come to him for advice.

He's remained friends with his longtime pals, Gus Corrado and Steve Reisch. He's a composer and musician who's mastered several instruments, including the piano. In fact, the first time we see him in "Mail Order Bride" Evigan is actually playing his own composition on the piano. He's constantly composing music and has recorded his work with the London Philharmonic.

But the most ironic thing of all, he's a journeyman actor who keeps on working. Some years are better than others, he admits. There were some lean times when he had to sell one of his prized possessions, Elvis Presley's Fender Jaguar guitar, to make ends meet.

"The humbling stock market in the year 2000 definitely made me work harder because I remember a long time ago when I said to the business manager, when I was really young, he said, 'When do you want to retire?' I said, 'I'd like to retire when I'm 40 'cause that's really old.'

"He said, 'OK, we'll set you up that way.' So pretty much I was in pretty good shape. Then 2000 came and wiped out little more than half of what I had and at that point, it was either give up or keep on working even a little harder to try to live the life you want to live."

Evigan, 55, says he thinks he inherited his grit from his parents. "My kids say that grandma and grandpa are the rocks of the family. They live their life a solid way. They got their first credit card maybe 10 years ago. They never needed one. They paid cash," he says over lunch here.

"They did take a loan when they bought a house. My father was working as an electrician for 44 years, and so they knew how much they were making every week and they paid it off ... But if you look at that thinking, especially now with what we're going through, you really say, 'You know what? That's what this country needs to do. Turn our thinking around and get back to basics.'"

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While he's not conventionally religious, Evigan is a spiritual man. "I don't really consider myself a religious person but when it comes to beliefs in God, I believe in God," he says. "I grew up in New Jersey, played the organ in the Baptist church. Grew up Presbyterian. Those values were always taught to me.

"All religions I think _ if you really break them down _ they're pretty similar. All the good in all of them is the good for all of us. I don't really have a sect that I focus on. Nature is mine. I sit on the top of a mountain and I see God. That's how I feel. I go to a beautiful lake or ocean with my dogs, I feel God."

Like his dad, Evigan is good at construction. "I really do enjoy building walls and ripping things apart and putting it back together and tinkering with things," he says. "No problem with electrical. I've done cinder-block walls and stucco, some tiling _ you name it, plumbing. I don't like plumbing, but I can do it. I have a couple projects going on at the house which aren't finished."

Those unfinished projects represent his downside, he confesses. "I'm bad at cleaning things up. I'm a multi-tasker that gets into the multi part but doesn't finish the task all the time. I'm trying to get that task done on a daily basis."

So how does such a nice guy conjure up such evildoers? "(The villain) is everything you don't want to be in life," he says.

"It's the opposite of you, unless it's the same as you. In this case, it's the opposite. That's how I approach any character. I ask, 'What is like me in the character and what's different from me in the character?' And things that are like you, you just let them go. And things that are different, you have to make sure you define them and then focus on them and make sure they're in every scene because that's the real trick in creating any character," he says.

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Sci-Fi's "Ghost Hunters" will be on the prowl live for seven hours on Halloween night trapped on an island in Delaware. The blue-collar guys, who supposedly hunt ghosts and all manner of spooky manifestations, say they think they've succeeded where others have failed because they ARE just normal guys.

Actually, they are plumbers by day, mesmerizing that leaky faucet and prestidigitating that drain snake. One of the intrepid searchers, Grant Wilson, says there are two kinds of hauntings. "I won't go too deep into it. But one is just like a leftover memory in a place that pops up at certain times," he says.

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"And the other one is just a ghost of people who were once alive. So anything that can make a person stay or be attracted to another person or an area, or an object in a house is reason enough. So it's pretty broad and that's why we call ourselves 'paranormal investigators' because you really got to put clues together and figure out what would cause a person to stay in that location whether they be dead or alive."

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It's taken him 25 years, but producer Mark Redhead has finally made "God on Trial," which premieres on PBS' "Masterpiece Contemporary" Nov. 9. The story takes place in Auschwitz during the Holocaust in which people caught in the trap of genocide pose the question everyone asks in times of crisis: Where is God?

Redhead explains why it took him so long to mount the film. "I think it's to do with the fact that I personally was at the right stage to be able to personally put together a production of this sort and to get such an incredibly good cast and to find ("Masterpiece" producer) Rebecca Eaton to support it. Rebecca ... for six years actually _ has championed it and was ringing me up saying, 'When are you going to make that film?' And so when the BBC rang me up in October of last year, it actually felt like _ kind of curiously, like a gift of God. I sort of thought of this thing I've really desperately wanted to make _ bizarrely as an atheist _ just terribly hungry to make a film about God. I felt actually that it was a special _ a special gift, really."

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Amanda Topping, fresh from her "Stargate" days, has found solace in "Sanctuary" on the Sci-Fi Channel. She's also producer on the show. "I'm very hands on; more so than I probably should be," she says. "But I'm very hands on. I took the mantle very seriously. So part of my job, I felt, was to go out and try to get us the funding to continue to make the show.

"So I'm in touch with our financial guys on a regular basis and that's kind of my job, is to go and get beaten up. Why does television cost so much money? And I have to answer those questions. I'm involved in the casting and editing, and making sure that the crew is all put together. Now I'm doing post production, mixing shows, color correcting and the sound and everything."

She works nearly around the clock being both the actor and the producer. "I think actors are wimps now. I used to think that I had the hardest job in the world. Sam Carter (her character from "Stargate") was a really intense character in terms of the volume of dialogue that I had. And I used to think, 'Oh my God, I've got 10 pages of techno babble today. I'm working so hard.' And now I just laugh at that and go, 'Oh my God, there are days where I just want to be an actor again.'"

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