More Than Just A Pretty Face

A spirited soccer practice at the Rose Bowl has ended, and Andrew Shue of the Los Angeles Galaxy is steering his sleek black Porsche into the heart of Hollywood. The car is hardly eye-catching in this part of town, but the driver draws plenty of stares. Two bronze-skinned young blondes in a BMW convertible recognize Shue and in an effort to get his attention, swerve madly through traffic, leaving bystanders to wonder if someone is filming a Dukes of Hazzard reunion.

All this for a second-string midfielder in a first-year professional league? Granted, the Galaxy has emerged as the success story of the fledgling Major League Soccer, winning its first 10 games and drawing a league-high average of 34,107 fans to its home matches at the Rose Bowl. But hardcore soccer loyalists can't be terribly thrilled that, in a league filled with U.S. World Cup veterans and foreign superstars, the face most recognizable to American audiences, and the one most likely to cause a car accident, belongs to Shue, who plays hunk Billy Campbell on the Fox TV series Melrose Place.

An athlete jumping into the entertainment field is not uncommon, but Shue, 30, represents a rare reversal of this trend: an actor playing on a major professional sports team. Yet Shue, a former All-Ivy League player at Dartmouth College and a professional for one season in Zimbabwe, considers himself a soccer player first. He got into acting at the prodding of his older sister, actress Elisabeth Shue. After landing the Melrose Place role with virtually no experience, Andrew stayed in shape by booting soccer balls around the set.

Shue takes issue with the standard American argument that there isn't enough scoring in soccer. "That is such a simplistic way of looking at it," he says. "To me soccer is like life. You're constantly moving and striving toward a goal, but you have to accomplish it within a flow. There are times when you come so close and get derailed, but that makes it all the more satisfying when you reach your destination. That's why you see players drop to their knees and cry when they score. There may be only three times in your life, or even one time, when you truly shine, but that doesn't negate the rest of the process."

Shue's life has been shaped significantly by the legacy of his older brother, Will, who died in a swimming accident in 1988 during a family vacation in Maine. Will was a star in the Shues' soccer-mad hometown, South Orange, N.J., and preceded Andrew on the Dartmouth team. Andrew still has a hard time discussing the tragedy. "Soccer was our bond, the thing that defined us," he says. "The day he died we had been playing soccer all day. Playing now is a return to our roots, the thing that makes our family tick."

In 1989, still reeling from Will's death and unsure of his future, Shue went to Zimbabwe, where he taught high school math. He also played for the Bulawayo Highlanders. In his first game Shue sparked a comeback from a 3-0 deficit and led his team to a 3-3 tie. He was carried off the field to chants of "Mafana"—which means "likable boy who delivers the goods." Shue became known as Sipho—the word for "gift" in the Ndebele language—and helped the Highlanders to the B.A.T Super League Championship.

When he returned home to the U.S. in 1990, Shue worked as a runner for ABC Sports in New York City before taking his sister's advice to try acting. In 1991 he went to Hollywood and quickly landed a part in a pilot that eventually fell through. But he was later signed by producer Aaron Spelling for Melrose Place. For Shue, acting is less of a passion than a means to an end: In 1993 he and a childhood friend, Michael Sanchez, cofounded Do Something, a national charity organization that supports young people active in community service projects.

After the first 10 games of the MLS season Shue had appeared in four games and played a total of 86 minutes. On May 12 he set up the winning goal in the Galaxy's 2-1 victory over the San Jose Clash, centering a pass to Greg Vanney from the left wing. Because the pass bounced off Clash defender Paul Holocher, Shue did not receive an assist. He made up for that with an assist in the Galaxy's 4-0 rout of the MetroStars on June 9.

"I want to do everything," says Shue, whose wife, Jennifer, is expecting the couple's first child in early August. "I want to play soccer for a few more years if my body holds up. I want to build Do Something so that it can fundamentally change every city in the country. And I want to keep on creating in the entertainment world, whether it's acting, producing or doing a really cool TV news magazine show."

It's enough to keep him in the public eve.