In FOX's new hit cyberdrama Dark Angel, actor Michael Weatherly plays a freedom-fighting journalist in a grungy, postapocalyptic world—what you'd expect from a show co-created by Terminator director James Cameron. Weatherly's vision for his own future is more benign. "I'd like to read on a beach in Tahiti," says the New York City-born actor, 32. "I don't have any plans of world domination, searing everybody with flamethrowing celebrity juice."

Weatherly has been slowly stoking that star ammo for years. One of two sons of Michael Sr., the importer of the original Swiss Army Knife, and Patricia, a hospital administrator, he got hooked on acting while in college. He went on to appear in four failed pilots and played Christina Applegate's former spouse on the recent but already forgotten Jesse. So Dark Angel feels like heaven.

Weatherly, who has a son, August, 5, by his ex-wife, actress Amelia Heinle, 27 (with whom he remains friends), simply smiles when asked about rumors that he has been dating Jessica Alba, 19, Angel's sexy mutant heroine. But he admits that success lets him indulge in another passion—shopping. "I always had three pair of pants, four shirts, a sweater and jacket," says Weatherly. "Now I have, like, three rooms of clothes. Of course, I have terrible taste."