When actor Chris Messina called on a recent afternoon, he had a good excuse for running late: He accidentally nodded off with his two-year-old son.
You can hardly blame the Long Island native for being tired - he's one of the busiest actors in Hollywood. This year alone, he appears in six films (including Ruby Sparks, now in theatres) and three high-profile TV shows (The Newsroom, Damages and the upcoming The Mindy Project).
Success was a long time coming for the actor, who turns 38 Saturday. After graduating from high school, he enrolled in Marymount Manhattan College on a theatre scholarship. Seized by doubts about acting, he dropped out, moved home and worked odd jobs - delivering pizza, assisting a lobster-boat captain, cleaning homes.
After a year, he decided to try acting again. He had his moments, like starring alongside Al Pacino in Salome, but it was a rollercoaster ride. "I have a million and one amazing stories about struggling in New York," he says.
When he moved to Los Angeles seven years ago, the struggle continued. Life was a marathon of couch-surfing, auditions and rejection. Dis-couraged, he booked a flight back to New York and was en route to the airport when his agent called about a final audition. Messina reluctantly did the audition, then headed right back to the airport.
As it turns out, he got the job - playing Ted Fairwell on HBO's Six Feet Under. "I had heard 'no' so many times," he says. "I was really waiting for another 'no.' "
It was just the break Messina needed. He went on to snag a series of prominent "good guy" roles, like the supportive boyfriend in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia and a cuckolded fianc脙漏 in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. (He framed the hiring letter that Allen sent him.) Since then, he's diversified his resume with films like Greenberg and Monogamy.
Now you can see him in Ruby Sparks. He plays the brother of an author (Paul Dano) whose protagonist (Zoe Kazan) comes to life. Next month, he tackles comedy in the new Fox TV series The Mindy Project. (He plays one of the doctors in the obstetrician/gynecologist practice in which Mindy Kaling of The Office is the main character.) "This is what I was dreaming about," he says of his banner year.
Messina credits his early interest in acting to his mother, Phyllis, a former dance teacher, and to high school theatre teacher John Gavriluk. Messina still visits his hometown of Northport, N.Y. "If it wasn't for my family, I'd never be on the phone with you right now," he says. "They paid for thousands of dollars of acting classes, and they never said, 'What the hell are you doing?' "
