"If I go to the track, I have what you call the stupid-name theory - the horse with the stupidest name will win." says the 34-year old actor. "If I'm in Vegas and it's clear that a pretty girl has never played craps before, I bet as much as I can on her first roll. And if I have an audition, I read the script and then throw it away, hoping it'll come back to me. That's if I want it. If I don't want it I leave it around the house, figuring maybe I'll jinx it and it'll go away."

These days Sweeney is gambling on a different sort of venture. The handsome, intense-eyed actor, best known for a string of films including Francis Ford Coppola's Gardens of Stone and John Sayles' Eight Men Out, has agreed to star in his first TV series, Fox's nouveau-noir sci-fi drama, Strange Luck. And his character, Chance Harper - a plane-crash survivor whose very presence inspires bizarre happenings, both good and bad - is hardly your typical television role.

"The first thing that you think of when you hear about someone with luck is 'Get that guy to the track!'" Sweeney says of his new alter ego. "But on the other side, it becomes a weight. You flirt with your luck, and it has a price."

Ironically, were it not for some strange luck of his own, Sweeney might not have found his wayinto the spotlight. An athlete who played baseball for Tulane University ("I would never step on the foul line, or something would happen - I don't know what"), Sweeney took up acting after a knee injury benched his dreams of reaching the majors. A couple of plays later, he met the director responsible for his first break ... sort of.

"This producer was casting a movie called Seven Minutes in Heaven and thought there was a role for me, but the director would just have no part of me, but later that producer was working with Coppola on Gardens of Stone and brought me in, and I was cast. And that's luck, see, because if I'd gotten the other movie, maybe I would have been bad in it and they wouldn't have wanted me for what turned out to be my big break."

With a choice time slot leading into the X-Files, strong story lines and a stellar supporting cast, Strange Luck could end up this year's sleeper sci-fi hit. But for Sweeney, the prospect of success is not as appealing as the chance to try something different.

"As an actor you're presented with a choice - the cash or the interesting project. But if you go for the cash, you'll end up an empty shell, so I try not to take that road." And if the gamble doesn't pay off and you end up without the cash or the job? "I guess that's the luck of the draw."