A Winner, at Last

After knocking around Hollywood for years without ever getting that one big break, 38-year-old Joe Cortese’s suddenly all over the television screen.

On Monday, Cortese stars in William Friedkin’s made-for-TV movie “C.A.T.Squad: Python Wolf” on NBC. Last week, his NBC miniseries about a tough, humorous cop and his girlfriend from outer space, “Something Is Out There,” beat back formidable ratings challenges from “The Bourne Identity” and “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” and won a series slot on the No. 1 network’s fall schedule.

“ ‘Something Is Out There’ was my fifth pilot and the first one to get picked up,” he said. “Until now I’ve been referred to as the Baltimore Orioles of the acting profession.”

Though the New Jersey-born actor has always been “in the action” as he puts it, working bit parts since 1972 in several film, television and Off Off Broadway stage productions, Cortese says he knows what it’s like to walk around Southern California “with a black cloud hanging” over his head.

“But if you don’t throw the dice, you can’t win the chips,” Cortese said. “The frustration and the rejection is no day at the beach, but I’m centered now after all I’ve been through. Nothing can rock me. If it’s a flop, so what?”

The potential to flop, even on NBC, is always great in TV, and the legacy of science-fiction shows that have flourished in prime time reads like a blank page.

But Cortese insists that “Something Is Out There” is really a character-based show about an offbeat bachelor with a sarcastic sense of humor, who is really not unlike Cortese himself.

Bringing his own personality to the character and making him accessible to an audience is what excites Cortese about this job and what, he predicts, even on Fridays opposite “Dallas,” will distinguish this science-fiction show from all the others that preceded it.

“I feel like I deserve it,” Cortese said. “I put my time in, and I’m proud of what I’ve done. But the competition is tough. Brandon Tartikoff must think I’m Mike Tyson or something.”