Desparate Housewive’s James Denton On Lasting Love

by Jesse Kornbluth

(Page 2 of 9) Nashville, he was not the kid in the drama club who knew the words to all the songs in the musicals. He played sports, graduated with honors from the University of Tennessee at

Knoxville, and started a career in advertising sales. His father, a dentist, acted in community theater; at 23,

Denton joined him in a local production of Our Town. Five years later, he quit his job to take a shot at acting full-time.He spent a few years in Chicago, where he scored part after part in plays and practiced serial monogamy: “Living with someone meant you could afford a one-bedroom apartment, so you’d date for a few weeks and say, ‘Hey, let’s save money and move in together.’” He was a natural actor, easy in his skin, smart about creating his characters, and no trouble for his directors; he got himself noticed and moved to

Los Angeles. Because his pleasant features revealed nothing of the man inside—he could be a villain or a solid citizen, as needed—Denton worked consistently in one critically acclaimed and commercially doomed TV series after another (e.g., The Pretender, Threat Matrix). In his early thirties, he had the young actor’s requisite brief and unhappy marriage: “an honest mistake, mutual confusion,” he says now.And then, five years ago, he went to audition for a play.Reading with him was Erin O’Brien, a friend of the playwright who had taken a part just for fun. “Jamie walked through the door,” she recalls, “and I went, ‘Wow, I’m in trouble.’”

Denton didn’t get cast.