Law And Order Star on Keeping his Marriage Fun and Drama-Free

Friends: “They give me peace of mind and a lot of laughs.”

Learning how to pace himself: “De Niro was a hero of mine. And Sean Penn. But I’ve realized I can’t operate at that level of intensity. That’s okay for movies. On TV, when you live with horror day in and day out, you have to protect yourself.”

Most of all, there’s Sherman, as wife and mother: “She isn’t demanding. And she’s totally calm. The most she says is, ‘I really need you to do this … .’”

The comedian Martin Shortt once told Chris Meloni that he could probably have been married three or four times. “It just didn’t work out that way,” said Short, who has been married to the same woman for 25 years.

Why does the Meloni marriage, now in its tenth year, look so good? Some of it is chemistry (when I floated the theory that “once the sex goes, it’s over,” Chris didn’t disagree), and some of it is luck. But a lot of it has to do with the choices a woman and a man make, and how much drama they like in their lives.