Do you get recognized on the street by fans of the show?

Not much. I look completely different off set than I do on. Once I take Daniel's glasses off I look very different. It's good because it gives you a sense of anonymity. You can do anything else after this and nobody knows who the hell you are. I have one of those faces that really blends into a crowd well. It makes my life very simple when I leave work. Christopher Judge, who plays Teal'c, gets picked out of the crowd a fair bit.

You don't sound particularly envious.

He gets a lot of attention outside, and he handles it well. I don't think I'm the same personality. I don't think I could deal with it as well as he does.

How's the fan mail?

It's been good. What I find amazing about it is -- what I've been getting so far, anyway -- it's very intellectual. I haven't been getting any of that crazy, obsessive, underwear-in-the-mail kind of stuff. It's all been very smart, written by people at least 25 or older, asking intelligent questions, and just saying that they really enjoy the show. It's the kind of mail you feel like responding to. You feel like letting them in, as opposed to, you know, "Good God!"

Is it a little intimidating to know your fans are that smart?

Oh, yeah. The archaeology stuff is a real stretch for me, and people are always asking me questions about it. Especially about Egyptian mythology. And I've done a little bit of homework on that, but I could not possibly answer the in-depth questions that are being posed to me. It does get a little bit much because you always want to sound like you know what you're talking about, but you don't, so you'd better just be honest about it. It's easier just to break the facade right away and say, "Hey, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about most of the time."

Do you go on the Internet for the fan reaction there?

I haven't gotten my computer hooked up, but every now and again my friends show me what's out there, and they look at some of the stuff about the show. I know there are a lot of sites out there. And when you consider that we're only reaching 20 percent of the American market, I think we're doing pretty well. Science-fiction fans are pretty dedicated. What's been nice about the Internet response is that we haven't been treated very nicely sometimes in the press, and it's good to see that the audience doesn't give a crap and they're still big fans of the show. They give us their feedback, too, which is wonderful, because they don't pull any punches. They say what they want to say. If they didn't like it, they didn't like it. But it's great to have that immediate reaction right after a show airs. I know the producers here go on there secretly and see what people have to say as soon as the show airs.

Are you a sci-fi fan yourself?

I was when I was a kid. Like most kids my age, when Star Wars came out I thought that was just the be-all and end-all. Sci-fi was really starting to find its legs then. I loved the old Star Trek series, and then things like Space: 1999 and Battlestar Galactica. And when you're a kid, that catches your attention because it's so different and so thought-provoking. The imagination just runs wild with it, and you want to get all the toys and play. But as I got older, I found -- especially with the new Star Trek series -- that they had become almost like soap operas; if you missed a week, you wouldn't know what the hell was going on.

What got you into acting?

I think as a kid I had a very active imagination. And things like movies and television were always unique to me in taking me out of everyday life. I grew up in a very small town, called Kamloops in British Columbia. It sounds like a cereal, I know. I don't think the name means anything. Or if it does, I never learned it. I started doing stuff at a very young age -- stage plays and whatnot. A teacher of mine in junior high school always nagged me to stay with it. In a good way, of course. She just kept poking at me, wondering why the hell I wasn't pursuing it. But there wasn't any opportunity to pursue it, not where I grew up. We had, I think, one professional theater, and no film industry. And I was 18 or 19 by the time I left there. I went to university in Vancouver, planning for a degree in business.

Yikes.

I know. I still look back at that with a smile on my face. But it turned out that I didn't have the credits necessary for business school that term anyway, so I just took a general year of arts. I found myself doing more plays than anything else, and the following year I switched into the theater program full-time.

What's next? Are you looking at features, or are you happy working in television?

I think most actors want eventually to move into features and to do work with a lot of substance and work with some really talented people. And hopefully to have stories told -- hopefully, of course, being the key word -- the way that they should be told because you have the time and the money to do it. So, yes, I hope that Stargate leads into something in those lines. As good as I know this show is, you just can't linger over every detail on a schedule like ours. You finally come to a point where, even if something's not right, you have to say, "That's good enough, and we'll fix it in the editing room." And boy, that hurts when you hear that. Because you want so much to get it, to bring it to that level. Working in television can have its moments, when it's absolutely right and working well, but for the most part it's a factory. And it has deadlines and it must meet those deadlines, and art is not really that key to it because it gets spiced up by all the other elements. So it can be a bit frustrating for an actor, but once you see your paycheck you sort of get over it. And I have to admit that there are times on this set when there's no place I'd rather be. There are moments when you'd be hard-pressed to find a better opportunity. It just feels right, and it's working, and it's very gratifying.

Thrown together on a location for months at a time, a cast like Stargate's can either bond really well or try to kill each other. Which has it been?

You know something, I have been nothing but pleasantly surprised by this group. This is an amazing group of people to work with. They're excited and inspired, and they all want this show to fly. They're committed to making it credible and worthy and dramatic and gut-wrenching and all those things. They want it to happen. And everybody here is a lot of fun to work with. Everybody wants to have a good time. I've been nothing but happy. I haven't had one qualm with any of the people that I've worked with here.