Cue the Agonized Guy

But Krause knows something about loneliness. When he was young, his father battled depression and, later on, behaved like "an adult child," Krause says. "He was tantrum filled." When Krause was a high school sophomore, he began to deeply question "the world that was created inside [his] little house." Questions ran through him so fast he couldn't sleep, but he kept them bottled up to fit in. Eventually, Krause contemplated suicide. Therapy brought him back to balance. "Suicide is a temporary solution to a permanent problem," he says, upending the old cliche. "Your soul is not going anywhere. So you learn to relax."

He learned well: some of Krause's best scenes in Six Feet Under have him playing the easygoing dreamer who helps his tightly wound TV brother come out of the closet. The square jaw covered by a few days of beard, his perfect grin flashing, the California attitude--"He's a guy you're instantly prepared to like onscreen," says John Curran, who directed Krause in We Don't Live Here Anymore. With luck we'll see more of that guy — and less of the tortured victim — when Krause's blue period ends.