Transformation time

Tim Daly says he finds acting a relief. Photo / Supplied

Tim Daly is wearing a watch with a face so big he could sling it around his neck and join Public Enemy. It's apt because the actor has packed more life into his 53 years than most. And time has been kind to him. He looks at least 10 years younger.

"Having a childish brain helps," he quips.

His youthfulness is all the more surprising because Daly, best known these days as the alternative medicine-practising Dr Pete Wilder on Private Practice, has not always been kind to himself. He has spent a good deal of his off-screen life beating himself up, physically with narcotics and alcohol, and psychologically, with crippling self-doubt. The latter is a habit he has never conquered.

"I'm incredibly self-conscious. I always seem to be outside myself, watching the movie of my life and wondering how I'm going. And it drives me insane. When I'm acting I lose that and I can be somebody else and that's my big relief."

It's hard to find evidence of the crushing shyness he insists he suffers from. In person he is warm, charismatic, as he chats in a nondescript room not far from the Private Practice set in Los Angeles.

Watching Wilder's transformation this season, from non-committal ladies' man to responsible wannabe father, it's as though the doctor is evolving into Daly. The actor and his wife, actress Amy Van Nostrand, have two children in their 20s. And yes, he's used to getting sideways glances when he's seen with his daughter in the street.

"I really am more like a woman because my children are grown up and they are out of the house and I'm like sitting around the kitchen table weeping that they are so selfish to grow up and leave me alone," he laughs.

Wilder, on the other hand, is only beginning to cast off his doctor ways. The third season of Private Practice picks up from the violent drama of the season finale. Violet (Amy Brenneman) has the episode's biggest drama. Her psychotic former patient Katie has attempted to steal her baby (and Wilder might be the father), directly from her womb.

All eyes are on Violet until Wilder steals the show with a tear-jerker of a scene about hating his dead wife. As the tears roll down his cheeks, he might as well be accepting an Emmy.

"The mystical, woo-woo part of acting is something I believe in and I use when I have to. But I hate talking about it because it sounds like mumbo jumbo, like magic stuff."

It's a weird cosmic joke that his key roles are related to flying and substance abuse. He is best known for playing Joe Montgomery Hackett in the sitcom Wings and for voicing Superman in Superman: The Animated Series. Daly was later nominated for an Emmy for his role as a drug-addicted screenwriter JT Dolan on The Sopranos.

"I never talk about this, but I suppose I'll talk about it now because it's been so long," he says, nursing a coffee, his only vice these days. "I got sober 27 years ago. It was my father's birthday. I'm convinced that I would be dead if I hadn't changed my life."

His father, James Daly, is best known for playing a doctor in the hospital drama series Medical Center. Daly jnr's mother, Hope Newell, was also an actor. His older sister is Tyne Daly, who starred in Cagney and Lacey; his brother-in-law is a TV and film composer. He is also related to former game show host and newsman John Charles Daly.

"Growing up in my family, the theatre is our temple," he says. "That's our place of worship."

Daly was 7 when he debuted on stage with his parents and two sisters and 10 when he starred in his first TV show with his father. His professional acting career launched in 1978 when he starred in Peter Schaffer's play Equus. Film, TV and stage roles poured in after that, and Daly worked alongside stars such as Kevin Bacon, Mickey Rourke and Annette Bening. Recently he had starring roles on the short-lived crime show Eyes, and the action-thriller The Nine.

Acting wasn't the only "disease" he inherited.

"The first time I drank, I drank so much that I blacked out and threw up on everything when I was 12. My family is littered with alcoholics on both sides for generations."

Genetics aside, the drinking continued into his 20s, as a form of self-medicating against his shyness.

"I have a tenuous relationship with the supernatural because I tend to be a sceptic, and yet they happen, you know. I had one of those kind of white-light moments. I was totally drunk and stoned and completely wasted, and a light clicked on for me. I just saw my own death if I continued on that path."

Instead, he threw himself into as many creative pursuits as he could.

Outside his achievements on Broadway and screen, he has dabbled as a producer and director on shows Execution of Justice, Tick Tock, Edge of America, Bereft (with son Sam) and Poliwood.

His creative abilities sometimes make it hard to accept his role as an actor on Private Practice.

"If I took the lid off myself, they would all hate me here so much because I'm constantly filled with ideas and suggestions. I just hope I'm healthy long enough to get into those years where I can be a character actor. But part of my fear is that it's going to be one of these deals where I wake up one day and it will all have just gone to shit. I don't want to be the guy who walks into the room and people say, 'what happened?"'

Lowdown

Who: Tim Daly, who plays alternative medicine doctor Pete Wilder on Private Practice
Where & when: TV2, Tuesdays, 9.30pm