Tom Welling: Super Man

That's when things went a little crazy. "It was quite an experience to be in Times Square and see myself about eight stories high on a poster for the show," he recalls. "That definitely took me aback." Now his anonymous days are pretty much over. "When you can't walk down the street without somebody striking up a conversation, it becomes a little odd," he admits, "but without those people, we wouldn't have jobs." So who's been his most surprising admirer? "Jeff Bridges," says Welling excitedly. "He started pitching me story lines for Smallville and talking about characters he'd like to see introduced. It was pretty wild."

Though Welling spends nine months a year in Vancouver on the series--"Sometimes it's isolating, like being in a submarine"--he hopes to continue to make inroads in Hollywood and is already looking at possible projects for his next hiatus. In what little downtime he has, he likes to indulge in his favorite new addiction, golf, and spend time with wife, Jamie, whom he married in July 2002. "We fell in love five years ago, before all this happened," he explains, "so a lot of this is just a bonus that's creating a great life for us. We don't have the trappings of 'He's got this' or 'She's got that.'"

So does Welling have grand plans for his career after Smallville? "While we were making Cheaper by the Dozen, Bonnie and Steve took me out to dinner for my birthday, and one piece of wisdom they both agreed on is that in this business, there is no secret knowledge. Everybody's made it or not made it for completely different reasons. You have to do what you feel is right for you and stick with what you believe. That's what I'm trying to do."

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Dennis Hensley

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