A man of action

NEW YORK - Dennis Haysbert makes no secret of the satisfaction he gets from his role on ``The Unit.''

As Jonas Blane, leader of a covert team of Special Forces operatives, he gets to play a man of fierce conviction and unyielding courage.

Also, a man of action.

With a flash of pride, Haysbert describes the scene from a recent episode where Blane and his ``undercover wife,'' their cover blown, dodge bullets in a perilous escape from the villa of a corrupt Latin American official.

``I had to fashion a rappelling harness on myself and the actress at the edge of a cliff,'' he explains. ``I didn't have to go down too far in the shot, but I had to know it would work - and with someone else on my back. And I had to do it pretty fast. I was taught right there, minutes beforehand.

``The physical action I love. It keeps me in shape,'' says Haysbert, who, at 52, surely is. ``But it's not just action for action's sake. I think it's something that's going to inspire.''

Airing Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST on CBS, ``The Unit'' premiered last March as an unusual blend: a tough-guy drama reinforced with tough-enough wives, who tackle patriotic duties of their own on the home front.

If members of the unit aren't racing to Afghanistan to take out a Taliban leader, they're dropping everything to rescue missionaries hiding out in the Philippines. And when the phone call comes and each man gets his top-secret orders, his wife responds in the necessary way: She suppresses a sigh and lets him go, then carries on with her workaday domestic support, all the while guarding secrets she will never know.

``On the base, these ladies have to find ways to navigate the maze of protocols: the Army's idea of what's right and wrong, what's accepted and not accepted,'' Haysbert notes. ``And they're in a constant state of ignorance.''

``The Unit'' was created by David Mamet, whose writing revels in the male psyche. Executive producer Shawn Ryan was creator of the gritty FX cop drama, ``The Shield.'' And it draws on the experiences of writer-supervising producer Eric L. Haney, who served in the Army's secret counter-terrorist Delta Force.

So the tales are not only gripping, they also have the ring of authenticity.

``Unlike most shows,'' says Haysbert, ``there's a foundation of truth.''

Haysbert - whose co-stars include Scott Foley, Robert Patrick and Regina Taylor as Blane's wife - has a history playing men of character and dignity.

In 1992, he starred opposite Michelle Pfeiffer in ``Love Field,'' a film about a couple drawn to each other in the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy. Four years ago, ``Far From Heaven'' placed him in another story of interracial love: as a gardener who befriends Julianne Moore's Connecticut housewife, circa 1957.

But it was on Fox's thriller ``24'' that Haysbert made an indelible impression on the public. He was strong and heroic as President David Palmer, the nation's first black chief executive, in a performance that surely got Americans thinking such a thing in real life isn't so farfetched, and is maybe overdue.

At 6-foot-4, with a rich baritone, Haysbert commands the screen, as well as any room he happens to occupy. Breakfasting in a Manhattan restaurant, he seems to catch the eye of half the other diners, any of whom might readily help vote him into office were he running for something (or at least consider buying a policy from Allstate, for whom he serves as TV spokesman). He's not just an actor, but a man of some influence.

``There are people who hang onto the words that we say and the things that we do - and believe it,'' says Haysbert, summing up his approach to acting. ``Yes, it's entertainment. But I think if we're going to do it, it's worth being responsible.''

Growing up in San Mateo, Calif., the eighth of nine children, Haysbert learned about scoring the approval of spectators as an avid high school athlete in football, basketball and track.

But acting promised even more than applause from onlookers.

``If I did my job right, I could make them cheer - but if I did my job right, I could ALSO quiet them,'' he says. ``I could make them FEEL what I was feeling.''

Maybe so. But as a young black man entering the market in the mid-1970s with few role models besides Sidney Poitier - well, what made him think he could make a go of acting?

``I don't know ... I don't know,'' he says quietly, then: ``Tenacity. I kept believing that I could do it. That being black didn't matter, and that if I had the talent, I should be able to do what I wanted to do.

``As far as I was concerned, the sky was the limit,'' says Haysbert, who has played a president and now, as an unsung death-defying patriot, helps safeguard the homeland every week. ``So why not me? Why not?''