Rick Rossovich

With his tall, lean, muscular frame and buzz cut, Rick Rossovich seems perfect for the military and law enforcement roles he often played on TV and in film. Yet, truth be told, he stumbled into acting having first migrated to Hollywood in the hopes of becoming an art director. But on his second day of working on set construction, Rossovich took the plunge and won a non-union bit part in a martial arts film. Acting was to be his Hollywood game. Rossovich had his first film role of note in "Losin' It," a 1991 low-budget film in which he played the Marine on leave in Mexico. The film is better known as the first romantic lead for Tom Cruise, with whom Rossovich co-starred in "Top Gun" (1986), playing the role of Slider, the fast-talking Annapolis graduate. Rossovich was the tongue-tied Chris McDonell in "Roxanne" (1987) and Leary, the corpsman, in "Navy SEALS" (1990). He was an executed prisoner who is revived with chilling results in "New Crime City" (1994), and starred almost all in the buff in the PLAYBOY film "Cover Me" (1996).

Rossovich is possibly more recognizable for his TV roles, principally as Dr. John 'Tag' Taglieri, the surgeon who left Nurse Hathaway at the altar in the final episode of the first season (1994-95) of "ER." On Rossovich's first series, he was Geller, a cop, in the short-lived "MacGruder and Loud" (ABC, 1985), and Spud in the equally short-lived primetime serial "Sons and Daughters" (CBS, 1991). In 1995, he started his first of three seasons starring as Lt. Palermo, the head of a team bike patrol officers in the USA Network series "Pacific Blue." He also made occasional appearances in TV longforms, including "Luck of the Draw: The Gambler Returns" a 1991 NBC miniseries.