David Boreanaz: TV's most famous vampire is back—only this time he's taking a bite out of crime as an FBI agent in Fox s hot new show Bones. Check out our exclusive MF interview

Men's Fitness, Sept, 2005 by Brian O'Connor

HERE'S THE ELEVATOR PITCH: DREAMING BIG, SON OF A Philadelphia TV-news weatherman migrates to Hollywood. Gets girl, marries girl, divorces girl. Parks cars, paints houses. Big break arrives when spotted by casting agent while walking dog. Appears in WB series as a 248-year-old bloodsucking vampire, parlays character into own hit show. Five-year run ensues. Gets another girl. Marries girl, moves to Hollywood Hills. Child arrives. Recruited to star as FBI agent in forensic-anthropology crime drama in which people solve murders by examining remains of bones. It's called Bones. To get in shape for series, hires nutritionist. And suddenly, everything he's ever known is wrong.

OK, so that was a long elevator ride. But give us a break: After two years on WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and five as the star of its Angel spin-off, 36-year-old David Boreanaz has logged a dog's life on TV. Though he's thankful for these vampiric star vehicles, his character in Fox's Bones (think calcium-rich CSI), a no-nonsense FBI agent named Seeley Booth, is a role that doesn't, er, suck.

"Mentally and physically, Angel and Seeley Booth are two completely different characters," says Boreanaz, pacing in his mechanic's shop while a new battery is dropped into his 1966 Mustang. "Angel wasn't your well-rounded supernatural character. Seeley is a bit more streamlined. Any guy who works for the FBI is always ahead of everybody; he perceives what's going on before it goes down, so Seeley's got a different outlook on life. I'm studying Steve McQueen, Cary Grant, and Gregory Peck, actors who were charming and strong. I'm playing it classic, with a twist."

That word, classic, enjoys heavy rotation in Boreanaz's vocabulary. There's the classic '66 Mustang, a gift he gave his wife for their 2001 wedding; and until two years ago, before thieves lifted it from his mechanic's shop, there was his classic '58 Chew. "It's hard for me to look and jump back into [buying] a classic vehicle right now, but I am standing in front of a nice 1939 Ford Deluxe Street Rod, but it's got a little bubble on the paint ..."

His classic taste isn't limited to cars. On Bones, Seeley Booth's attire adheres to a smart-set business suit, but at Boreanaz's urging his character will exude late-'50s maximum machismo--law-enforcement chic, sans Stetson. "There's the suit and fie that's standard for Seeley," he says, "but I gave him a little flair--a '50s skinny tie and a sniper belt buckle that's out of the ordinary. Classic ties of the '50s were the best, and it comes down to that era being the best time to live. I love classics--anything old, vintage, antique."

Boreanaz, whose uncle was an antiques dealer, does concede that the 1950s weren't the best time for everything--namely, if you were liberal politically, rooted for a New York National League baseball team, or required ACL surgery. Near the end of his Angel stint, a decades-old running injury flared up Brioni blazer, $3,500; Andrea Fenzi cashmere sweatshirt, $395; Faconnable striped shirt, $125; Mavi Marco jeans, $88 and presented Boreanaz with his greatest fitness challenge yet.

"I had injured my ACL in a high school track meet, and back then the surgery was radical, so I decided against it," he says. "Nowadays, it's just a scope, real easy, so when the injury came back, I finally decided to have it done. But after I came out of surgery, it still took a long time for me to get my walk back. I couldn't run on it for six months, so I just sat around and gained weight. I was very limited in what I could do."

One cadaver ligament later, the actor says he's now at 95% of where he'd like to be, boosted immeasurably by his personal trainer, Andre. But it took a while for him to reach that point. Early this year, after 12 months of intense one-on-one, Boreanaz still felt something was lacking in his program. That's why, as the ink was still drying on his Bones contract, he decided to hire a personal nutritionist. And finally, everything started to come together.

"All along, you think you're eating the right things, you're working out and doing everything right, but then you find out that you're not building muscle--you're just storing fat. [Through my nutritionist] I've been learning a lot about metabolism. In car terms, everyone has their own engine, and you have to take care of it in a very specific way."

How does Boreanaz see himself? "I gotta be a Ferrari engine," he says. "Great when it's running, but when you put shit in there, you mess it all up. I've been more consistent with my food patterns lately--I'm being more strict--because we start shooting again at the end of July and I have certain goals set. I want to get even leaner, with more definition. I want to get rid of unnecessary fat that's been stored and get a better feel for eating right. I've always eaten greens, but now I'm eating them every two hours. I used to try to get my heart rate extremely high, thinking

I was burning fat, but now I know that by doing that, I was burning muscle. Now my heart rate peaks at 142, and I'm eating fruit at the end of the night, which kicks my insulin level up, helping to burn fat."