In search of Dylan McDermott.

THE MAN YOUR GIRLFRIEND THIKS ABOUT WHEN YOUR GIRLFRIEND THINKS ABOUT MEN

Three days changed Dylan McDermott's life unalterably. Today is not one of them, but it is a very good day. [paragraph] Right now, he is sitting alone in the living room of his recently purchased Brentwood house, a 1920s Spanish mansion just off a coral-tree-shaded jogging lane. The move here late last year, to the house previously owned by Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, confirmed that McDermott has finally found his place in Hollywood. He is in his fourth season as the star of the legal drama The Practice, and in the spring he will star in a movie he's very proud of, Texas Rangers, a gritty western in which he plays a Confederate soldier turned lawman. [paragraph] Yet at this excellent moment in his life, he looks a little grave. In part, that's because of his strong, dark features--a face brooding enough for a long career in cigarette ads. But it's also because he is pondering a different time. "I came out here," he says, looking back fifteen years to when he first moved to Los Angeles, "went to a party, and Jack Nicholson is there. You see the guy who's made it, and it's like, Oh, shit, this is gonna take a while. Certain actors, they just show up and--boom!--they've arrived. But I was never that guy." He turns quiet and seems slightly ill atease. …