America has an insatiable appetite for sturdy, fresh-faced heartland heroes, and boyish actor Chris Klein deliciously satisfies it. The 23-year-old Illinois native moved with his family to Nebraska when he was 13, and while still in high school was handpicked by director Alexander Payne for his debut role as a hunky football player in Election. Klein's spot-on performance no doubt led to his being cast in the super-successful American Pie, playing -- what else? -- a hunky football player (a role he reprised yet again in American Pie 2).

Breaking out of the gridiron grind, Klein went on to play the romantic lead in the sentimental Here on Earth (opposite Leelee Sobieski and Josh Hartnett) and the romantic comedy Say It Isn't So (with Heather Graham). Add to his resume two new films - the Mel Gibson Vietnam War drama When We Were Soldiers, in which he plays a young lieutenant, husband and father, and Rollerball, an update of the 1975 James Caan actioner, in which he stars as the roller-blading gladiator.

"When I was in the fourth grade we were supposed to write a little paper on what we were going to be when we grew up, and I wrote about being an actor," Klein reveals. "And the teacher handed it back to me and told me to redo it because acting was not a real career. That was far from inspiration to be successful to do this. But I've wasted plenty of summer afternoons in the movie theater."