After a rebellious youth, Rodney Rowland flies straight in Space: Above and Beyond. If I had just been a house painter or something like that, I would've destroyed myself a long time ago," muses Rodney Rowland. "Acting forced me to be sober; it forced me to constantly search and learn to take myself apart and figure out who I was. I needed to become healthy so that I could function as an artist and see if I could handle the pressure when it got tough."

In Fox Television's Space: Above and Beyond, Rowland portrays Cooper Hawkes, an "In-Vitro" (a genetically engineered human gestated in a laboratory and "born" at the developmental stage of an 18-year-old). According to the show's backstory, the In-Vitros were initially designed to serve mankind in its war against artificial-intelligence beings, but things didn't go exactly as planned. The In-Vitros - or Tanks, as they're often called - refused to fight and thus became pariahs in Earth society. But now, with the AI War concluded, they are beginning to gain the same rights as natural-born humans and integrate into society. Hawkes serves with the 58th Marine Squadron in Earth's new war against a mysterious alien race.

The son of a preacher, Rowland spent most of his youth in much the same way as his In-Vitro character; rebelling in every way he could possibly imagine. "I was the epitome of the black sheep in the family," he admits candidly. "My brothers and sisters were born a year apart from each other, and I was born four years apart. I was very much a loner, looked down upon and made to feel worthless. But on some level, I knew I was something. That's Cooper as well. If he was a rebel just for the sake of being a rebel, I couldn't relate to that . But he is a rebel based on protecting himself. He is not going to be put down. There is something in him that is good, and it's going to come out one day. It's kind of like how my life is now. I guess I'm no longer the black sheep."

Born in Newport Beach, Calif., Rowland spent much of his youth interacting - against his wishes - with authority figures. Then acting offered him an outlet, and he dove into it with abandon. Soon after committing himself to the actor's life, he scored roles in the on-the-edge New York theater productions such as Fuel, Who's Got the Edge, Hazards Ahead, Waltzing in Wonder and Short Fuse. His off-Broadway success led him back to California, where he broke into the film business in B movies like Just Looking, Let's Get Lost, and The Dice Game. Then came his mainstream breakthrough in Space.

"It's interesting to play Hawkes because he's a 24 year old guy who's actually only 6 years old," Rowland says. "That's real trippy and it keeps me on my toes. At first, I was thinking, 'How can someone be born at 18 and know - for instance- not to drop his pants in the middle of the street and take a dump on the corner?' I decided that someone programmed all kinds of information into his subconscious so that he comes out with all that knowledge. But there's still a very real innocence there that's challenging to play. To me, acting is so much more of a risk than anything else," he says. "For me, personally, I chose acting because it was the scariest thing I could imagine doing. It is so terrifying on some levels, and then you do it and you forget you're up there and you get lost in this feeling that takes over. Then you're gone, and it's a much greater rush than any of the other thrill-seeking things I used to do. To be able to do this, I had to have a spiritual side going strong. I knew I needed to do something that was going to challenge me, or I wouldn't have a life. It was that simple."

Space: Above and Beyond often referred to as Combat! in outer space, especially appeals to Rowland because he grew up on the dramatically textured action movies of the `70's, films like The French Connection and Mean Streets.

"I love the unique quirks of the show and the straight-out drama," enthuses Rowland. "I get these moments were I walk in and can just be this complete lunatic, standing up for everybody and saying, `I'll do it' and not care - just to be a showoff with some classic one-liners. Then there is the opportunity on other occasions to play the true innocent. So it fulfills all of my fantasies as an actor. It's just so interesting; it's so much fun to do all of this, to put on army clothes and say `I'll kill him! Look out!' It's like playing army as a kid. You get to do it all."

Though Rowland is a science-fiction fan, he doesn't really identify Space as such, preferring to think of it as a dramatic series with a genre premise. "People have called this a sci-fi show," he says, "but I don't care what genre it comes from as long as it has the emotions underneath that connect with me. I feel the same way about music. If something is good., I react to it. So, do I love science fiction? Well, I love Star Wars. But Star Trek was so intellectual - or tried to be - that it really wasn't appealing to me. I'm not an intellectual kind of guy. I relate emotionally, very much like my character."