Few young actors can claim as impressive an initial run as Christian Slater. With his Jack Nicholson-inspired delivery (and eyebrows), Slater nailed the alt-era’s most iconic teen-flick characters: the clique-conscious sociopath in Heathers and the pirate-radio DJ in Pump up the Volume. He even stood tall amidst the likes of Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, James Gandolfini and a honeybear-bong-smoking Brad Pitt in True Romance.

Then Slater’s movie career imploded in the wake of his Robert Downey Jr.-esque excesses, and he segued into direct-to-DVD trash, TV guest spots and theatre work. Now, in the winkingly titled My Own Worst Enemy, Slater’s staging a comeback as a spy with a split personality: that of a globe-trotting secret-agent embedded in the skull of an efficiency-expert suburbanite. Or vice versa.

Though the story is indebted enough to Jekyll and Hyde that Slater’s two on screen personalities share the first names Henry and Edward, the actor told me during a recent teleconference to promote the show that his inspiration comes from his own filmography.  

“In Pump up the Volume, I played a very shy high-school kid who by night was this guy who had this other personality that he only felt comfortable being in the privacy of his own room,” Slater says. “I like the duality of that. I like the Clark Kent/Superman aspects of that particular film.”

Slater’s cult-movie charisma carries over to the small screen. He brings both subtlety and electricity to his dual role and doesn’t even bust out the Nicholsonian tics until Henry starts losing it. His own unfamiliarity with series work helps feed his performance, he said, but he’s rather enjoying TV’s longform storytelling style.

“Having done theatre and movies, you get to tell that one whole complete story within two hours that night or over however many days it takes to make the movie,” he said. “With this, it’s a continual unfolding journey and it really is up to the writers and how creative and clever they’re willing to be.”

Who knows if Enemy might improve enough to become a cult classic like Slater’s early films, but he believes it’s possible for TV to make a similarly lasting impact.

“If they’re done with integrity and have interesting characters that people can relate to, [TV shows] certainly have the ability to stand the test of time. If people are putting their heart and souls into them, it comes across.”

MY OWN WORST ENEMY AIRS 10PM ON GLOBAL/NBC.
 
How to Grow Up and Influence People
Christian Slater isn’t the only former-kid-actor-turned-train-wreck redeeming himself on the tube. We’ve seen the horror shows — it’s hard to top Full House’s ex-meth-head Jodie Sweetin hosting the clothing-optional reality show Pants-Off Dance-Off — but many more these days are returning degradation-free:

How I Met Your Mother’s Neil Patrick Harris is the gold standard, stealing every scene he appears in since popping up in the first Harold and Kumar movie as a debauched version of himself.

Where Harris’ Doogie Howser was, in hindsight, a pretty awesome TV character, Brian Austin Green’s David Silver was lame even by 90210 standards. But that’s not the reason the failed rapper is not in the Bev Hills revival. In fact, Green’s comeback was already under way with a surprising star turn as the badass uncle from the future in the intense Terminator spinoff, The Sarah Conner Chronicles.  

Dawson’s Creek’s Joshua Jackson is on Fringe and still active in movies, Roseanne’s Sara Gilbert is on Big Bang Theory and, following his stint on Dancing with the Stars, People magazine named Saved by the Bell’s Mario Lopez 2008’s Hottest Bachelor. Lopez’s ex-classmate, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, headlines the TNT series Raising the Bar.

Thanks to their efforts, maybe when Gossip Girl is dead and gone Blair and Chuck can graduate to grown-up roles rather than Pants Off Dance Off 2 — though I would, like, totally watch that.