Jeffrey Nordling plays straight-laced FBI agent Larry Moss on the current season of the Fox hit series "24." The actor, who was raised in Washington Township and Saddle River, has been working nonstop since 1985 when he finished the master's program in theater at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Some of his best-known starring roles include Sela Wardís ex-husband, Jake Manning, on Once and Again and sleazy publisher Brent Barrow on the FX series Dirt with Courtney Cox. He has appeared in more than 100 TV shows, movies and stage productions, including "Macbeth" with Alec Baldwin in New York City. With his striking good looks, he's a natural at Hollywood red carpet events, but in Bergen he was best known as an athlete.

Nordling was a star soccer goalkeeper at Ramsey High School, a summer lifeguard at the Brookside Swim Club in Allendale, and an intrepid 3-year-old skier at Campgaw Mountain, where he remembers "cutting in line and walking on people's skis." He went to Wheaton College as an art major with a spot on the soccer team. After he took up acting, he realized that he couldn't do it all and remembers letting go of competitive athletics as the first major heartbreak of his life.

Nordling says:

"In college, I took an acting class for the first time and it was like putting on an old pair of jeans. It really was a natural fit. All I wanted to do was be on stage."

"I would love to go back with my wife and three girls and drive all around from Washington Township to Mahwah. Then we'd hike to the hidden lake in the hills that we called 'The Point,' where I used to swim with my friends."

"'24' is great. We shot 10 episodes of exteriors in D.C. so we went to the White House and to the National Counterterrorism Center and met real FBI folks. It's reassuring to know that the people I met in D.C. are level-headed, law-abiding people. They're much more like Larry Moss than Jack Bauer."

"I was a typical Jersey boy. I loved playing Little League in Washington Township and riding my bike all day. I would ride through Westwood over that ridiculous 'Suicide Hill' to Tice's Farm and pay a dime for unlimited cider, eat cinnamon doughnuts and then ride back home."