From Men Don't Leave to NCIS: LA, the roles of Chris O'Donnell

Long before he was cast to headline one of CBS' most popular procedurals, Chris O'Donnell was Hollywood's go-to good guy, having racked up an impressive roster of roles before the tender age of 30. On the eve of the twelfth season debut of NCIS: LA on CBS, we asked O'Donnell, 50, to look back on his most memorable characters.

O'Donnell starred opposite Jessica Lange in this tearjerker about a bereft widow and her two young sons. "That was a big thing for me," recalls O'Donnell. "That was the first movie I ever made. And you know, to this day, it still may be the best movie I ever made. Paul Brickman, who wrote and directed it along with Barbara Benedek...he's only done two [big] films, Risky Business and Men Don't Leave. He and producer Jon Avnet were really the two guys who changed my life. Even though it wasn't a huge box office success, it made a huge impact in Hollywood. Suddenly every major agency wanted to represent me. Everybody wanted to hire me." 

O'Connell's roll was relatively small in this poignant film about friendship that starred Mary Stuart Masterson, Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy. But O'Connell said yes because Avnet wanted him on the film. "He told me I was going to learn how to do a Southern accent. I drove my little '87 Honda Accord from Boston College where I had taken some summer school classes to get caught up. I drove down on what was my 21st birthday. I pulled into a little motel in Senoia, Georgia or somewhere. I show up and go, 'where is everybody?' And they go, 'oh they're doing a night shoot, they won't be back until sunrise." So I ended up getting really bad takeout Chinese food and a six-pack of beer. That's how I spent my 21st birthday."

O'Donnell was among several young Hollywood turks who were cast in this Dick Wolf-penned movie about anti-semitism at a New England prep school. "I look back on it and think, Cole Hauser didn't know Ben Affleck or Matt Damon at all. It was incredible bonding experience. Look at movies like Taps or The Outsider. You think of guys who were young and working. They are all movie stars now. You realize at the time they weren't, they were just these young actors who were trying to get jobs. I mean, we are were all living in the Radison in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Miserable! We finally moved out and got these apartments across from the dump in Lowell. You'd have to close your windows because it smelled so bad. We were getting paid nothing and having a ball. How amazing to look back at how simple those times were. Now I'm living in Pacific Palisades and Ben and Matt both own houses within three miles of me. That's how it all ends up."

When O'Donnell was cast opposite Al Pacino – who won an Oscar for playing a blind, retired Navy officer – everyone could see how intimidated he was around the veteran star. "The director knew I was really nervous around Al and he didn't want that to go away," recalls O'Donnell. "It was good for the movie. He also told Al, 'don't get cozy with Chris. I mean, be nice to him, but don't buddy up with him.' At the same time I was 21 and he was a lot older than me, so I didn't think much of it. Then he started to be much friendlier at the end and invited me over a couple of times. He explained to me that the director had told him not to get too close. Thankfully, at the end, we got to hang out." 

For much of his career, O'Donnell was cast as the likable, romantic lead -- like in Circle of Friends (as the cute rugby player who falls for Minnie Driver) and Mad Love (as the cute Seattle boy who falls for Drew Barrymore). "I was so green," he recalls. "I didn't no any better. Throughout my career when I was younger, there were plenty of scripts that came in and sometimes I would go meet the director, sometimes I wouldn't bother. I would come up for a reason why I couldn't do it. A lot of times it was because, deep down, I didn't know if I could play the part. That was just me not knowing what my own abilities were. After doing this for as long as I have, and specifically after doing that Arthur Miller play on Broadway ("The Man Who Had All the Luck" in 2002), you realize what you are capable of and how much more satisfying it is when you get out of your comfort zone." 

O'Donnell played the Caped Crusader's sidekick in the two Joel Schumacher movies. "I've told this story before but I remember with my roommates in college that we were getting dressed up as the Justice League or superhero. And someone told me and my direct roommate, 'you two are going as Batman and Robin.' I said, 'there is no way I'm getting dressed up as Robin. Not even for Halloween am I going to be Robin." And then of course I ended up as Robin across the world. It was a great experience, but clearly we did one too many. Maybe we should have quit while we were ahead. I think Warner Bros. just got a little greedy." 

This action film about thrill-seeking mountain climbers features one of the most frightening moments in cinematic history – O'Donnell is forced to cut his dad from a dangling rope to order to save himself and his sister (Robin Tunney). "That was done on an outdoor wall," O'Donnell remembers. "It was huge. The thing must have been eight stories high. Filming it was one thing, but just the idea of that is hard to fathom. You gotta have a screw loose to want to climb some of those ledges. I watched Free Solo. I can't even imagine. I got anxiety just watching them. And people do that are doing that for fun? They are cut from a different cloth."

O'Donnell had the unenviable job of playing Meredith's first boyfriend Finn after she broke up with McDreamy. Fortunately, O'Donnell knew his time at Seattle Grace would be short and sweet. "It was always supposed to be an in and out thing," he recalls. "They kept asking me to stay for some more episodes. At a certain point they wanted me to stay even longer, but having been in the business long enough I knew it was never going to be my show. I was going to be so far down the totem pole. TV can be a great business but you need to participate in it. From a business standpoint, it wasn't going to be a success for me. But what it did for me was incredible. It gave me an enormous boost. I was blown away by how many people were watching that show. Everywhere I went, people were watching that show! I'm very grateful to Shonda Rhimes and the team for the run. It opened up a lot of doors for me and kind of brought me back."

O'Donnell is particularly proud of how the drama, which follows the LA-based Office of Special Projects (OSP), a division of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, continues to resonate with viewers. "CBS is really good at doing these shows that become comfort food to people. You can't just be constantly ripping headlines from the news and turning them into episodes. The trick is to get the audience to fall in love with these characters. Because once they do, they will go on any journey you want. They will tune in. They want to see their friends. I remember sitting in a car with LL Cool J the day after our first premiere episode, and we were like, 'what's going to happen?' We were waiting for the text to tell us what our numbers were. They came in and we had these great numbers. People tuned in and they stayed tuned it. It was six episodes later that we got sold in syndication, which was unheard of. It was really a validation of what we were doing."