Moving Into America’s Living Rooms

Each fall season brings a slew of new shows and even more new faces who have a chance at becoming stars. Here are some to watch:

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow

ABC’s “Alias,” Sundays, 9 p.m.

Jennifer Garner’s heard it before: a high-visibility part. Her breakout role. An inch closer to stardom. It was said about her characters in the short-lived series “Time of Your Life,” films “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and “Deconstructing Harry” and her recurring part in “Felicity” (where she met now-husband Scott Foley). But no explosion followed. So now, as the dynamic star of ABC’s fall techno-thriller “Alias,” Garner isn’t getting her hopes up.

“I guess this could be my ‘breakout role,’ but I have heard that so many times now that I am a little more immune to it than I was a few years ago,” she said. “While I am excited, I’m not banking everything on it.”

In “Alias,” Garner, 29, plays the intellectual and physically agile Sydney Bristow, a seemingly goody-goody graduate student who moonlights as an elite intelligence officer and remains stoic in the face of tooth-extracting torture.

“There are times when we overlap,” Garner noted, comparing her role to her off-screen personality. “[Sydney]’s adventuresome, an achiever, she’s not afraid, but she’s good at keeping secrets--which I am horrible at.”

A Houstonian transplanted to West Virginia in her youth, Garner fell into acting while studying at Denison College. With a healthy regime of classical theater, her mentor “took the West Virginia out of me,” and Garner launched herself in the New York theater scene, where her first job was as an understudy in a production with Ron Rifkin--who, coincidentally, plays her superior in “Alias.” (“When Ron was cast as my boss, I just died,” she noted.)

Charlie Hunnam as Lloyd.

Fox’ “Undeclared,” Tuesdays, 8:30 p.m.

Almost three years ago, Charlie Hunnam made the jump from cozy BBC teen dramas to a key role as gay 15-year-old Nathan in “Queer as Folk,” the edgy, graphic and much-talked-about British television miniseries. Within months, he became England’s latest heartthrob, gracing covers of teeny-bopper and gay magazines alike.

Now the 21-year-old has moved from the U.K. to Hollywood--and into comedy--and is poised to have the same effect on Americans, this time as Lloyd, the British theater major in Fox’s college sitcom “Undeclared.”

“He’s a good guy just come to America looking for a bit of fun--it’s not so much he’s the suave one, he just has the accent and gets laid a lot,” Hunnam said, jokingly adding that for his wife, actress Katharine Towne, the Brit novelty has already worn off. Discovered by a producer for the BBC children’s series “Byker Grove” while he was “goofing off” with a friend in a shoe store in his hometown of Newcastle, England, Hunnam went on to guest star in a half-dozen episodes of the series in 1989 and launched a modeling career.

At 17, he returned to TV in a BBC/Disney show, “Microsoap,” then comedy, “My Wonderful Life,” before taking on the role of Nathan.

Filming “Undeclared” was a welcome change from his British experience, Hunnam said, because “you actually get paid in the U.S.” and “there is so much money put into things and available for creativity.”

Next appearing in the film “Abandon,” in which he plays a “an exceptional composer with a healthy disdain for the world” opposite Katie Holmes and Benjamin Bratt, Hunnam hopes to one day get on the other side of the camera.

“The life of a film from conception to actually being out in the theaters goes through so many phases,” he noted. “And being an actor, you only see part of that--I am interested in more.”

Kyla Pratt as Breanna Washington UPN’s “One on One,” Mondays, 8:30 p.m.

If Kyla Pratt’s grandmother hadn’t been so proud, showing off photos of her grandchildren to strangers, Pratt’s career may never have been launched.

“This modeling lady she met asked if I wanted to be in one of her shows,” recalled Pratt, during a break in production on UPN’s “One on One.” “I did my first show, got an agent and a manager, and then I have been working ever since. That was seven years ago.” It’s difficult to believe, however, that the self-confident and expressive 15-year-old wouldn’t have found a way, regardless.

Since her first commercial in 1995 for a “Da Vinci, Time and Space” CD-ROM, Pratt has accumulated almost two dozen television credits, guest appearing on shows such as “ER,” “The Hughleys,” “Friends” and “Family Matters,” and recurring on “Moesha.” This fall in “One on One,” she plays high school freshman Breanna Washington, who falls into the lap of her professionally single father when her mother leaves the country.

It is Pratt’s first starring role but not the only time she has gotten attention. After playing a demure, bespectacled Maya Dolittle opposite Eddie Murphy in the 1999 film “Dr. Dolittle,” she won a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award for best newcomer and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

Though now home-schooled by her mother, Pratt--the eldest of five children--considers herself “a regular teenager” who just also “makes money,” calls Eriq La Salle a friend and is used to having people ask her for an autograph when she is hanging out at Universal CityWalk with friends.

And while having to be “on” at all times gets tiring, Pratt said, “I’m OK with it, because I’ve got my own show. This is real fun and that’s all that matters to me.”

Zach Braff as J.D.

NBC’s “Scrubs,” Thursdays, 9:30 p.m.

Zach Braff says he learned how to lose from Alec Baldwin.

“I got cast in a Public Theater production of ‘Macbeth’ as Fleance and Seward, the two young guys in the play, and I had a huge sword fight with Alec Baldwin, who was Macbeth,” Braff began. “Of course I had to lose, but ....”

A stage actor who crossed into film with “Getting to Know You” and the romantic comedy “The Broken Hearts Club,” Braff is making his television debut as J.D., the in-over-his-head medical student in the NBC comedy “Scrubs.”

Originally from South Orange, N.J., Braff began acting after seeing his father in a community theater production. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1997 with a degree in film before heading to New York to work in indie films and theater.

While Braff dabbled with comedy as a bleached-blond drug addict with a weakness for buff men in “Broken Hearts,” J.D. is his first “real” comedic role and his first shot at TV since starring in a Bruce Paltrow pilot alongside the director’s daughter, Gwyneth, 12 years ago. (The show, for CBS, was never picked up.)

Clueless, but feigning self-confidence, J.D. fumbles around his first day in an emergency room, unable to even inject a needle in a patient’s leg. At one point, he hides to avoid helping with a patient.

“The interesting thing about playing J.D. is that the audience is invited into my head to hear what I am thinking while I am acting out whatever it is I am trying to portray myself as,” Braff said. “I really like that because it’s such a human thingNwe put out one thing while, really, in our heads something else completely different is going on.”

Mia Kirshner as Mandy

Fox’s “24,” Tuesdays, 9 p.m

and as Ruby Cates

CBS’ “Wolf Lake,” Wednesdays, 10 p.m.

Mia Kirshner likes to make people flinch.

“I would never want to be part of something that didn’t push the way people think,” she said. “It’s important to be part of new, innovative things.”

At 17, she garnered national attention and a best supporting actress nomination in her native Canada for a sultry depiction of psychic dominatrix Benita in the film “Love and Human Remains.” A year later, she followed with an innocently corrupt schoolgirl striptease in the macabre “Exotica.” The dark-haired beauty, now 25, believes her dual roles in this season’s dramas “24” and “Wolf Lake” will only add depth to her portfolio.

“I am definitely used to dark roles, and ... both characters in ‘24’ and ‘Wolf Lake’ are very dark and complicated, and yet completely different,” Kirshner said.

Kirshner describes “Wolf Lake” as “gothic drama” and her character, Ruby Cates, as “the richest, smartest girl in town, who always had whatever she wanted ... [but] who, because of that, felt dead inside and is deeply unhappy.”

And while she hesitates to divulge her role as Mandy in “24”--”the producers put a gag order on me”--she notes the character’s “versatility” and the show’s innovative visual style.

The biggest challenge of juggling two shows is catching enough sleep between appearing on the set and the preparation she conducts beforehand. The network of Web sites dedicated to her continues to grow, and Kirshner recently graced the pages of Maxim posing in a white bustier, and described watching her films with her parents: “They know I am not a tame person.”