Memories From The Set: David Anders

Anders' first TV role was as a high school senior sitting at the same lunch table as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's characters in a 2001 episode of the teen comedy. "I was with both of them, giving them a hard time, bullying them a little bit," he says. While both of the sister-moguls were kind to him, he remembers that "whichever one had curly hair that day was very sweet."

Perhaps his best-known role was only Anders' second one ever: the smooth assassin Sark, whose shifting loyalties made him an eminently watchable character over the run of the ABC spy series. But with bad guys coming and going so often, "I'd mentioned something to Jennifer Garner about not knowing where this character arc was going, assuming it wasn't going to be for long," he recalls. "Because I didn't know how long I was going to be on the show, I asked her for an autograph." He laughs. "It came back to me at the end of the day, and it said, 'David, get comfy. You're going to be here awhile, Jennifer.' I was like, 'What do you know that I don't know?" He was promoted to series regular the next season.

Anders played new lab tech Travis Watson in a Season 5 episode that was originally intended to be the kickoff for a recurring part, "but I only ended up doing the one," he says. Still, "I got to do some sexual innuendo with Marg Helgenberger" and the role allowed him to use his normal accent. "It was nice to get out of the spy world and be more of a regular person," he adds. "My mom, she got to see me smile for, like, the first time on TV."

When Anders was offered a part on the witch drama, he immediately wanted to vanquish the idea. "I was like, no, it's not my thing, it's not for me," he remembers. But the series' casting department knew just how to change his mind. "They said to my people, 'Before he says no, tell him he gets to wear a mustache and work with Billy Zane.'" And just like that, Count Roget — a British cabaret owner trapped in a demonic time-loop — was born.

Though his Seattle Grace role wasn't one for the record books — "I played the husband to a pregnant wife" — Anders says he enjoyed his time on the ABC drama in an episode that introduced Addison into the world that would eventually be Private Practice. "Kate Walsh was just an absolute delight."

"After Alias, I couldn't get arrested as an American," Anders says. "Everybody thought I was English, so I was like, 'OK, let's just keep doing it. I'll do the English thing — and speak Japanese, to boot.'" Such was his time on the NBC sci-fi drama, which cast him as an almost immortal man who'd spent time in feudal Japan centuries before his run-in with the Petrellis & Co. The 2008 Writers Guild of America strike messed with his arc a bit, something Anders calls "kind of a bummer," but he was pleased with his character's exit: After being buried alive, "They dug him up to suck the life out of him."

The great thing about playing Russian bad guy Josef in the eighth season of Fox's highly popular action series? "It was an interesting experiment to be a part of," Anders says. The weird thing? The series' central conceit — that each season takes place over the course of one day — doesn't allow for all that much character development. "You want to insert different nuances into your performance, but every episode... that you shoot on it, it's just an hour of the day. So you're the same guy six episodes later that you were [at the beginning of the season], you know?"

Murderer and Renegades member Cyrus Vanch showed up in Season 1 to cause trouble for Oliver and friends, allowing Anders to add yet another villain role to his resumé. "The bad guys are more fun to me. They're more juicy, and more nuanced. And I've found a way to ride that line between smarm and charm," he says, laughing, "so you've got to love to hate my characters."

Anders played Troy Cutler, the ethically ambiguous CFO of the talent firm employing Callie Thorne's Dr. Dani in Season 3. The experience, particularly working with John Stamos and Thorne, was "amazing," Anders says. "It was an opportunity to do something lighter in that bright USA [Network] world, even though" — naturally — "I was the antagonist."

As a self-described "Johnny Genre," Anders has appeared on many sci-fi and fantasy series, and he jumped at the chance to enter Salvatore Land "because I was friends with Ian Somerhalder, and the opportunity to go play with him sounded very appealing," he says. So he happily accepted the role of Elena's biological father. "Everybody who's a part of that show became great friends of mine, and are still to this day."

When the fanciful ABC drama came calling with an offer for Anders to play Dr. Whale/Dr. Frankenstein, "My first thought was: How the hell does Dr. Frankenstein fit into a fairy-tale story?" Anders recalls. "I didn't realize it was going to take a year to get into the Frankenstein clothes, but I bided my time and waited, and I think it was worth it." Bonus: His black-and-white scenes lent a cool edge to the character and his surroundings. "The CGI in Once Upon a Time is sometimes not-so-hot CGI," he notes, "[but it] looked really good in black and white."