Well, Kevin Sorbo fans, you helped me do my job this morning. Thanks for all the questions you posted. Kevin was game to take them on — though it was just 7 a.m. in California. Actually, he chose the time for our phone date and it turns out he's an early riser. We're talking 5 a.m. early. It goes back to his youth, growing up on a Minnesota farm.  Plus, he had a newspaper route for nine years as a kid and had to be out the door on his bike early to get the paper on his customers' doorsteps in time for breakfast.  No wonder he has such a strong work ethic.

And the truth is, Sorbo, 49, has been working hard for many years. He goes from one project to another with little downtime and has been on some of the world's most popular television shows — Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. So why isn't he on a huge network show? It's not for lack of trying. Sorbo admits to nurturing a little resentment at a certain ABC executive who turned down a sitcom Sorbo would have starred in called Bobby Cannon. Sorbo would have played an aging quarterback who is just starting to get that his glory days are over, and he says it was really funny — a compliment to the writers, not himself. Kate Walsh, of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice fame, would have co-starred. (I can imagine her working up more steam out of a pairing with Sorbo than she did with McDreamy, can't you?) But, alas, it was not to be. Sorbo says his sitcom was deemed too much like Everybody Loves Raymond —  as if that were a bad thing. 

So, yes, Tracy E., he's interested in doing a TV series and he's looking at two possibilities, one on the Sci-Fi Channel and the other for Showtime. He can't say much about either, except that the  Sci-Fi show is like "X-Files meets CSI" and his character is a bounty hunter. Which, of course, led us to talk about his guest role on Psych, playing a motorcycle mad bounty hunter, and his part in the 2007 Hallmark Channel Western Avenging Angel, in which he was a preacher turned bounty hunter.  He laughs when I ask whether that Psych character could be spun off for his own USA Network show. "I loved doing the show," he tells me, and he'd like to return as a guest but he doesn't see a spin off. He loved Angel, too, and this isn't a man who sugar-coats his opinion. He's equally frank when he doesn't like something.

Now, amidst all this work is the movie that will air on ION Saturday night, Prairie Fever (click here to find the channel in  your area).  He plays a cowboy, a former sheriff who escorts three women back to civilization and runs into a fourth, who can take care of herself. I saw it and I'd give it a B. Sorbo likes it but isn't entirely happy with the editing. But he really likes making Westerns and has three more coming, though when I asked what genre — past, present or future — he favors he said, "I'm up for anything that's just good."

Besides work, Kevin has golf. He plays in lots of celeb and charity tournaments. And he is indeed a family man, as you posters pointed out. His children are now 6, 4 (next week) and 2, and he and wife, the actress Sam Jenkins Sorbo, are homeschooling. That means the whole family can go with him on movie locations, or move to places like Vancouver, where Andromeda was made. Even as we speak, a sleepy-eyed 6-year-old Braedon wanders into dad's office over the garage to say good morning. The Sorbos live in the posh Bel-Air area of L.A. but have the house up for sale as they are moving to a place where they can have a yard and good public schools, where the kids will eventually go.  Or, who knows, maybe they'll pull up L.A. stakes entirely. Kevin says sometimes he's tempted to do what an acting buddy of his once did — move out of Hollywood. That's when the work started coming.

(photo courtesy thescifiworld.net)