Sometimes when GARY DOURDAN-who plays the brooding Warrick Brown, a forensics specialist on CBS's top-rated crime drama C.S.I: Crime Scene Investigation - goes to the supermarket, things get a little out of hand. "People are hysterical" he says. 'Oh, I love the show. Oh, my gosh!' The next thing you know I'm talking to a whole family." Ah yes, the price of fame.
But Dourdan has always been one to get noticed. In fact, he was discovered while out for a stroll. "I was walking down the Champs Elysées in Paris and the director Debbie Allen saw me," he says. They started to talk and Allen eventually cast him as a regular in the Cosby spin-off, A Different World.
Dourdan followed with an eyebrow-raising breadth of roles, from the cringe-inducing Trois, which he calls his low point, to the $90 million science-fiction suspense-filled thriller Alien: Resurrection.
Dourdan is in negotiations to shoot My Boy this summer, a film in which he may play a biracial rock star in Ireland. The role has a special challenge. "The Irish are like the Jamaicans," he says, laughing. "If you don't get the accent right, you're assed out."
