Because David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson saw their privacy obliterated after The X-Files turned them into media icons, you might think that DB Sweeney would be a bit reluctant to take a role in Chris Carter's new series, Harsh Realm, and risk being hounded by curious fans and paparazzi. But the veteran actor isn't too concerned about the trappings of fame.

"Well, I knew David when he was doing X-Files in Vancouver; I was there doing [the 1995 Fox series] Strange Luck on the same lot," he says. "So I kind of watched David go through that process. There's definitely pluses and minuses to being popular, you know, but I think I'd adjust - I believe actors are disingenuous when they talk about the burdens of fame and success. There're definitely worse problems to have."

That modest answer is typical of the easygoing Sweeney, who's had a successful career in offbeat films such as Fire in the Sky, Memphis Belle and Roommates and in television shows such as the quirky Strange Luck and the short-lived 1997 ABC series C-16: FBI. In Harsh Realm, he plays Mike Pinocchio, a cynical soldier trapped in a covert military computer simulation. Although the Long Island native is a sports enthusiast who played baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson in John Sayles' Eight Men Out and a hotshot hockey player turned figure skater in 1992's The Cutting Edge, he says Pinocchio may be the most athletic role he's ever undertaken.

"What attracted me to the character was that he's a real physical presence," Sweeney says. "I've never really played a guy who's so physical - it's like he's a force to be reckoned with. That's fun to play and it's what I've been looking to play in the last few years, so it's good to find a part that has that element to it.

"The other thing that's great about him is that he has a terrific sense of humor," he adds. "Pinocchio's really dry and he's pretty much a straight shooter. It's kind of an old-fashioned character- not exactly like John Wayne, but more from that kind of lineage, as opposed to one of these self-aware, post-modern-type characters you see everywhere now."

While Sweeney admits he was disappointed with the failure of Strange Luck and C-16 and wary of returning to television, he believes Harsh Realm was just too good of a project to pass up.

"It's a great story," he says. "Plus, I like watching action movies but I've never done a straight action film before. This show is the closest I've ever gotten to the kind of movies that I go see as an audience member."