Actor Scott Foley knew he wanted to be an actor all his life. But he spent part of his teens ruining his chances.

His mother died when he was 15, and he dropped out of school and drifted. "When you lose a parent at a formative age like your teens, you're acting out anyway, but when that happens, there's anger and confusion," he says in a sunlit hotel room. "I remember drinking. I got arrested once for possession of alcohol."

But rescue arrived from an unexpected source. "One of my friends' father and mother pulled me aside after a couple months of me drifting around, and they said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'What do you mean? I'm not going to school. I'm going to figure it out.'

They said, 'Don't be an idiot. You're going to come live with us. You're going to go to high school, and we'll take care of you.' I think when these friends of mine said, 'We'll take care of you' that showed me a compassion I'd never known before."

Though they already had four children, they became Foley's legal guardians and through them, he graduated. "I was very fortunate," he nods.

Though he has traveled a bumpy road to be an actor, Foley is starring on one of his best roles yet. He's portraying the real-life Green Beret surgeon, Jeffrey MacDonald, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two children in "Final Vision," airing on On Demand and Investigation Discovery Go. Viewers also know Foley from his role as the naval consort on "Scandal," which returns to ABC on Jan. 18, and as the hunky leading man on "Felicity."

Foley was 18 when he hauled off for Los Angeles to become an actor. "Not knowing anybody, and not knowing anything about Los Angeles," he says. "I remember going to the St. Louis county public library – obviously before the internet – and just knowing that 'The Tonight Show' taped in Burbank, I got a Burbank phone book and looked up a hotel to stay in. And that's how I got my first hotel. I bought a one-way ticket out here and took a shuttle from the airport to Burbank. I didn't know where to go, didn't know what to do."

He says he gradually acclimated. "You meet one person. You find one job, and they introduce you to someone else, and you say you're an actor – and everybody's an actor out here – and they say, 'Well, I know an agent' or 'I know an acting class.' You get in an acting class with other actors and you network."

It sounds easy. But it took Foley six years to land a paying job as an actor. His first role was on "Sweet Valley High," and he rode the bus to the audition because he didn't have a car for several years.

"I made 230 bucks for that episode and quit my job waiting tables and thought, 'This is it!' Little did I know it'd be another four years before I got another acting job. I lived in what was called 'a sleeping room.' There were 19 of these rooms in the back of an apartment complex and each room came with a twin bed, a small closet and a side table ... Bathroom was down the hall – two bathrooms for 19 rooms, and it was $190 a month in Hollywood."

He landed a job selling insurance and was able to walk to work. Chuckling, he says, "I didn't know a thing about selling insurance. But those are the days that give you the character and the fortitude to really decide is this what I want to do? Because you really gotta stick it out."

At one point he decided not to stick it out. "Christmas was coming up, and a relative I'd never met sent me a check for Christmas, $2,500. This was 1992 and I think I had $20 to my name. I thought, $2,500 that's amazing! So I packed up all my stuff and bought a ticket to the Virgin Islands to St. John and was going to go live the island life. I was going to tend bar or do something but live on an island. It's always been a dream of mine."

He planned to camp on the beach until he found a job. But when he arrived, the campsites were full and he blew half of the $400 he had left for a hotel room for one night. He was forced to bivouac in the National Park, which was illegal. And the donkeys that had once served the now-defunct sugar plantations ate the strings to his tent, so it would no longer stand.

In desperation he phoned his father. I said, 'Dad, I'm homeless. I'm in St. John. I'll do whatever you want. I'll come back to St. Louis, I'll go to college.' He said, 'Are you kidding me? You're not coming home, go back to L.A. I'll buy you a ticket.' So I went back to L.A. And it's the best thing he ever did for me. That's the only time I wanted to quit."

Foley has been married to his second wife, actress Marika Dominczyk (his first wife was actress Jennifer Garner) for 10 years. He's the father of three children, a daughter, 8, and sons, 5 and 3.

MCDERMOTT SHINES IN NEW COMEDY

Fox flies high with its new comedy "LA to Vegas," which premiered Tuesday and stars Dylan McDermott as a laissez-faire pilot impressed with the milk-run he maneuvers. This is one of the first comedies for McDermott, and he's simply hilarious. "It took me a good five years to sort of latch on to what acting was," he says. "It's taken me 20 years to get any good at it. It's been a slow process for me to understand the acting business. It was very small steps for me. Just to walk across the stage was a big deal and have people look at me. It's a funny thing the acting business because I want to, I suppose, hide sometimes. I refer to it as 'hiding in the spotlight.' You don't want to reveal everything, but then there's a light on you. It's complicated."

AUDIENCE TO WITNESS INTERROGATION

Ever wonder what it's like in the interrogation room when cops have a suspect on their radar? Well, Investigation Discovery will show you exactly that when it premieres "The Interrogation Room" on Thursday. Audiences will be privy to the actual conversations between the police officers and the suspects – whether they're investigating vanished women, bodies reduced to ashes or weirdo confessions. The 10-part series begins with the murder of 36-year-old Brent Luttrell, who's found dead in the middle of a country road in Grand Rapids, Mich. The detectives have only one lead ...

GERVAIS BACK ON THE TELLY

Iconoclastic Ricky Gervais will be back on the tube Friday when he interacts with five kids in a new game show called "Child Support." Hosted by Fred Savage, the series asks contestants 10 questions that need to be answered correctly to earn the top prize. If they answer wrong, the competitors have a chance to be saved by the five kids who have been posed the same question by Gervais. Knowing Gervais' off-the-wall sense of humor, the show promises to bring some kudos to ABC.

(Luaine Lee is a California-based correspondent who covers entertainment for Tribune News Service.)