YOU MIGHT SAY THAT CAMERON Bancroft literally fell into his life's work. He was 16 and hiking with friends on a steep trail in his hometown of Vancouver, B.C., when he stumbled, plunging 150 feet off a cliff. Hospitalized for two weeks with severe head injuries, he spent the next year convalescing—his right leg and arm and his back still bear the scars of his fall—and his dream of becoming a hockey star was dashed. "That's why I got into acting," says Bancroft, whose first role was in a high school production of West Side Story. "I learned that was another way to meet people socially."
Nowadays, Bancroft, 29, best known as last season's sensitive college quarterback Joe Bradley on Beverly Hills, 90210, is still falling—this time in zero gravity. As rookie astronaut Zeke Beaumont on the new syndicated series The Cape—Corbin Bernsen costars—Bancroft brings more than hunk appeal to the role. "I saw a mature, reluctant hero when he read for us last spring," says executive producer Kary Antholis. Adds Bancroft: "You think that astronauts are pretty top-gunnish. I try to show human vulnerability, which is the hardest thing to do because you can't play that. I wanted to make Zeke modest and humble."
The second of three children of Glen Bancroft, an attorney, and his wife, Wendy, a retired nurse, Bancroft, who is single, recently relocated from Los Angeles to a rented oceanfront house in Cocoa Beach, Fla., near the show's set at Cape Canaveral. But admittedly shy, he's not one to party. "When people I don't know approach me, it makes me freaked out," he says. "I've become less interested in going out." Safety-wise, that might not be a bad thing. "He's always tripping over himself, spilling things," says Bernsen laughing. Bancroft seconds that: "On the set I try not to touch anything. "Once I'm in my space suit, I won't even mess with the zippers."
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