‘HeartBeat’ Heartthrob

When it rains it pours--and lately it’s been a torrent for actor Darrell Larson.

He’s been playing a scraggly pet-cemetery owner battling land developers in Thomas Strelich’s “Dog Logic,” currently at the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

He was the “red herring” in the recent Perry Mason TV movie, Blair Brown’s nutzoid brother in “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” and the womanizing Dr. Paul Jared in “HeartBeat,” ABC’s women’s clinic drama that was renewed this week for next season.

Still, he wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of recognition as “HeartBeat’s” clean-cut fertility expert with his own performance problems.

“I drive down the street, and there are carloads of girls shrieking at me,” Larson said haplessly during an interview. “I thought I had run over them. This sort of thing never happened before.”

Don’t misunderstand; he rather likes it. “I’m grateful to be a leading man” in a show overly populated with women, he said. “And I’m in heaven being surrounded by all those beautiful women. If I’m secondary to them, that’s OK. I’ve always preferred women anyway. They’re probably finer as people.”

Certainly if you compare them to Dr. Paul.

“Paul’s got a Lothario mentality, but he’s not a misogynist,” Larson said. “He’s just got some problems with commitment. And I love that we’re dealing with an area of life that hasn’t been dealt with on TV: having babies, homosexuality--sex in general. The more we talk about that stuff, the more normalized it’ll become.”