Breaks Aren't All Good For Anderson

Hollywood -- Don't squeeze!

Richard Dean Anderson is wearing a soft cast on his right hand. Shaking hands is dangerous, but still he throws out his injured hand to everyone he meets.

The break is months old, and would've healed long ago, but Anderson refuses to give up hockey -- the passion that got his hand broken in the first place

He's fractured his back and arms, and both feet have been under the knife. The list goes on. Sleeping, he says, is agony.

"I've been overactive, I like to do things," admits Anderson, a self-proclaimed "black sheep" of his minnesota family, and the oldest of four boys. "I think my brian would've atrophied if I hadn't bee so active and curious -- (For example) about what it's like to jump out of an airplane.

As MacGyver, Anderson pushed the actor/stuntman limits for eight years. In his first post-Mac role, He returns as an undercover cop in tonight's In the Eyes of a Stranger (CBS, 9 EDT/PDT). There's no bungee-jumping. Instead, "I'm doing normal cop things . . . (and) I actually have sex with a woman," he says.

"I was nervous, I had never done a love scene before," he says, adding that he and co-star Justine Bateman are both "misbehaving kids," and they shared a "professional relationship."

Perhaps. But rumor was they were a hot item. "Pick up the Globe or the Enquirer and, for me, please, find out who I'm sleeping with these days," he jokes. It's untrue. And unlikely, he says. ("What is she? Half my age?")

Anderson, 42 and never married, is a bit offended at the hunk and sex-symbol labels.

But he doesn't discount marriage -- and "I love kids," he says. "I know I'd makes great father."

Settling down may be in the cards. For the first time in about 15 years, Anderson is looking at buying a home in California. A permanent home.

Karen Thomas,  USA Today, April 7, 1992.