With a busy acting career in Seattle, John Billingsley decided to make the move to California and see what fame and fortune awaited. The gamble has certainly paid off.

"I moved here in October of '95 and started getting work in '96, but really began to get busy in '97," Billingsley remembers. "I think of '97 as the beginning of my film/TV career. I had done stuff in the past, in Seattle, where I had a theater company. You could do the occasional small part in a movie or TV show that would come to town."

It wasn't long after this that Billingsley was cast in Enterprise as the inimitable Dr. Phlox. Like many actors, his first love is theater. His passion for theater was made manifest when he started his own innovative theater companies in Seattle. Billingsley was well-grounded in the art of acting before his move to Hollywood, but his legacy still lingers in Seattle.

"There are two [theater companies]. One is a company called BOOKIT, which we essentially adapted fiction for the stage," he says. "In its initial incarnation, when I started the company in 1990, we produced, primarily, short fiction. We performed it verbatim, in other words we took every word, the narrative included, and made it a function — dialog in the mouths of the characters in the story. As the company got older, and right as I was leaving, they began to move into longer works of fiction that actually called for adaptation. They did the John Irving book, 'The Cider House Rules' after I left, which they brought down to the [Mark] Taper and eventually took to New York. They adapted it into a two-night piece a la Nicholas Nickleby. They're still doing real well. They've done a lot of wonderful stuff in the last few years.

"I was also a founding member of a company called Freehold, which is an acting conservatory where I taught for a number of years. They had a theater arm, an investigatory arm, that is also still going and doing well. I'm probably prouder of my work with those than anything I'll ever do. I'm really glad they survived," he states with pride.

Theater work, for now, is on a personal hiatus. "It's all kind of tricky. I get approached a fair amount about doing theater. I'm kind of loathe to do a project while [Enterprise] is going on, unless I'm really covered with a strong understudy and I know I'm not going to be leaving the show in the lurch. That rules out all LORT [League of Resident Theatres], it rules out the Taper, South Coast, etc. Not that they've been approaching me or anything," he jokes.

He continues to explain his trepidation about doing theater at this point in his life. "It also makes it tricky to do even good solid fringe productions. It's awfully tough to find somebody willing to step in an understudy capacity. So that leaves hiatus, and the problem there is I really want to try and see if I can do film during the hiatus. I hate to say I've put theater on the backburner for seven years, but I suspect it's probably going to be a bit of a time before I really get to do much. My wife keeps threatening to produce something and if she does, I have to be in it! I miss theater, it's how I spent my life — fifteen years of doing nothing but theater. It's been almost four years now since I've done a play."

Time isn't wasted for Billingsley when Enterprise is on hiatus. This past break, he managed to sneak in a film role. "I was doing a movie called 'Out of Time' with Denzel Washington, that Carl Franklin was directing in Miami. The show was nice enough to accommodate a tricky shooting schedule. I was back and forth between Miami and Enterprise over the course of about six weeks from early July to the beginning of September. It's one of those summer popcorn movies ? Denzel Washington is a small-town cop who's framed for a murder he didn't commit and I play his best friend who's sort of a scrofulous, alcoholic coroner — kind of a wisecracking foil. It was a lot of fun. Not the greatest script in the world, but a wonderful experience."

Billingsley also tackled another major project this year: the purchase of a home. "We bought a house earlier this year, so most of this year has been moving in and taking all our old ratty furniture that we've scrounged from friends and stole off street corners, getting rid of all that and getting new stuff," he says. "That's been our major project."

Billingsley has worked on other movies in and around Enterprise. A role in the movie 'High Crimes' just preceded the show. But, as he explains, it ain't easy doing both. "It's tricky with a TV show schedule to work much else in. It's a little easier for me as the one character guy on the show. I have a slightly less demanding load. Still, from week to week you can't anticipate what your schedule's going to be. ['Out of Time'] was the only movie I've done [since Enterprise]. I've done a few other TV spots. They were awfully nice to accommodate [for 'Out of Time'] with a three week negotiation between MGM and Enterprise to work out the shooting schedule. I really was scheduled for every single day for about six weeks without any possibility of changes taking place. That's an awfully hard thing to pull off in this business. Usually, something's going to happen that's going to screw thing up. To have both parties sign off on it is pretty amazing. I was very appreciative."

Still, key episodes on Enterprise demanded the actor's participation. 'A Night in Sickbay' is one of his first major episodes of the second season. "It's the fifth episode that will be airing, although we shot it as the fourth episode. The captain's beagle, Porthos, has a particular infection that I can't seem to effectively treat and there is a possibility that he may die. The captain is so concerned that he decides he wants to be as close to Porthos as he can so he spends the night in Sickbay with me. It's sort of an 'Odd Couple' episode, or a 'Good God, Phlox is a weird thing when you see him on his own!' episode."

Indeed, the episode contains other disclosures about the doctor as well. "It's revealed I have a giant tongue. Let's see, some of the critters [in Sickbay] come in to play and I attempt to give a thumbnail psychoanalysis to the captain's psycho-sexual issues."

And although Billingsley says that there are no new revelations about Phlox in the upcoming episode "Singularity," he does promise that the episode is an entertaining take on the question "What if what if everyone's worst tendencies are amped up to the max?" Phlox's tendencies are particularly gruesome. "My tendency is to rather cheerfully and blithely go on with whatever medical experimentation that might interest me. This is where I'm prepared to open up Mayweather's skull, because he has a headache and I'm curious to find out where it might be stemming from. He's extremely cheerful in his willingness to commit a lobotomy on one of the crew."

For Billingsley, the main follow-up to "Singularity" is an episode called "Vanishing Point." "Hoshi has to be transported from the surface of a planet where storms are raging and she's afraid her molecules are breaking up. It does seem as if her crew members are suddenly not able to see her and she can't get through doors," he says.

As an added bonus for Season 2, we do get to learn a bit more about the doctor, both physically and his background. "We get to see my feet, we get to see my tongue and we learn more about my peculiar family back on Denobula. I think they want to be very careful about giving you information about my species and my history, and probably rightly so. What makes the doctor so intriguing is the fact that he's such a mystery and we know nothing about Denobulans. They take the occasional episode and they throw out a few little bits and pieces and this is one of those episodes."

The ride so far has been a good one for the affable Billingsley. Season 1 of Enterprise was a fairly easy adjustment, considering. "My schedule hasn't been nearly as arduous for me as it is for some of the others," he says. "I'm in almost every episode — they may skip me occasionally — but I frequently only work two or three of the seven days."

Even the makeup, the most asked about topic, isn't terrible. "The makeup is not as bad as I thought it would be. The only problem is the contact lenses. If I was working five days a week, 15 hours a day, day in and day out, then sure. You learn how to marshal your resources. I see some of the other actors, Jolene [Blalock], Connor [Trinneer], really having to find way to do that and I'm really admiring them for keeping it together. It's an endurance test. Scott [Bakula] at least had some knowledge of how that functions and came into this with his eyes open. I think some of the other cast members are now having to struggle with the real onslaught ? it's really not been an issue for me."

Speaking of the people who magically transform Billingsley into Phlox, the actor is pleased that some of the behind-the-scenes Enterprise team was recognized by the Emmys this year ... but hopes that other parts of the team will eventually be recognized as well. "The hair folks won [this year]," he says. "The makeup people should have won, but what are you going to do? Maybe next year. It's tough, I'm sure, on the technical side for those guys because the show's been on in one incarnation or another for so many years, I think they get taken for granted. It's hard to look at what they do with a fresh pair of eyes. They are incredibly talented people and they do wonderful stuff. But you've seen Star Trek for such a long time, and if you are a not necessarily an aficionado, I think it's kind of difficult to get over the 'Oh yeah, there that is again.'"

Television, movies ... even a new house. It would seem John Billingsley has made substantial progress since his big move from Seattle. Still, the actor remains modest about his achievements. "I've got the cushiest job in Hollywood, I think," he says.