Peter Gallagher is reminiscing about a defining moment in his acting career. It was the early aughts, and he had just been cast in a buzzy Fox drama in the role of Sandy Cohen. Some of his friends, however, had concerns. Why was he throwing it all away on what they dismissively wrote off as a teen soap?

At the time, he was a Tony Award-nominated performer who had given acclaimed performances under directors like Steven Soderbergh and Robert Altman. But Gallagher knew he was on to something. "Teen soap?" the father figure to a generation of "The O.C." fans says, still a little flummoxed at the idea. "I thought it was a great American drama with comedy."

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It's a late summer morning, a few days after the actor's 69th birthday. Gallagher arrives at Salon's New York studio early, prepared, and as confidently gracious as if I were his guest, instead of the other way around. It feels appropriate for a man who says that the only advice he ever gave his children was "to work harder than anybody else."

He's back in New York City rehearsing for his first Broadway show in almost a decade, a stage adaptation of Delia Ephron's late-in-life love story "Left on Tenth,” which began previews at the James Earl Jones Theatre this month. Gallagher plays a widower who strikes up an unexpected courtship with Julianna Margulies in the midst of mutual grief and illness. He describes the play as "a romantic comedy with harrowing moments," and tells me, “My character says at some point that he learned early that life is a continuous cycle of joy and pain."

It's an arc that describes Gallagher's own career as well. Shortly after graduating from Tufts University in the late 1970s, he made his Broadway debut in “Grease” as Danny Zuko. By 1980, he was starring in his first film, the unprophetically named "The Idolmaker." Yet, larger success eluded him for decades. Maybe it was his unique talent for playing characters Altman once called "handsome, vain, sleazy" types — guys who cheat on their wives, or guys with whom married women cheat.

Even as he racked up more quietly sympathetic roles in cult favorites like "Dreamchild," Gallagher admits, "I had this face when I was a young person, that frankly, if I saw me walking down the street my first thought would be, 'F**k you.' What was that expression? God doesn't give with two hands."

Back in 1993, he told the New York Times, "I always thought that if you do good work in small roles, then larger ones would follow. But maybe it will take 20 years rather than ten for it to happen that way for me." He wasn't far off the mark.

Peter Gallagher in Midtown, New York in August (Photo by Peter Cooper for Salon)He was 47 when he landed the role on "The O.C."........

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