A chat with Hart Bochner...

When you see Hart Bochner on the new USA network series "The Starter Wife" this fall, you might not immediately place him.

But then it will come to you: He was the sleazy businessman in the first "Die Hard" movie, Jacqueline Bisset's (and then Meg Ryan's) lover in "Rich and Famous," the killer in the cult fave "Apartment Zero" and the lead in the 1988 miniseries "War and Remembrance."

But there are huge gaps in the handsome actor's on-screen résumé.

"I stopped acting for a long time because I started directing in the early '90s, which is what I always wanted to do," he explained when we chatted recently. "Then I realized I missed acting and that I was still capable enough to exploit it."

"Wife," which stars Debra Messing and Judy Davis, originated as a miniseries in 2007 and proved so popular that USA ordered it as a series. Hart plays Zach McNeill, who becomes romantically entangled with Messing's character when he teaches her writing class.

"Wife" marks the first time he has taken on a role as a regular on a television series, and he seems very happy to have taken the series plunge.

"I'm having a blast," he said. "I honestly am having the time of my life. Every day I think to myself, I feel so lucky and I hope this goes forever."

Still, he wants to direct again. Hart's efforts behind the camera include the comedies "PCU," starring Jeremy Piven, and "High School High," and he wrote, directed and produced the 2007 romantic comedy "Just Add Water."

It sounds like he's willing to wait awhile, though. "People in the television business are much nicer than people in the movie business. They need product so the tendency is to say yes. The movie business got difficult and money is so tight that it's easier to say no and for an executive not to put themselves out on the line."

Online bonus: Hart has aged very well. But boy, he was basically the sexiest man alive in "apartment Zero." I found a few scenes of him and Colin Firth that are very homoerotic...

A series of beefcake shots of Bochner after the jump!