PASADENA, Calif. - While Eddie McClintock may play the plucky hero in Syfy’s thriller Warehouse 13, his real life has been far more taxing.

A latch-key kid as a teenager, he began to tumble into trouble early. He was smoking cigarettes and marijuana, committing minor acts of vandalism and testing authority at every turn.

But he was also an athlete who wrestled for 12 years, including two years in college. “The duality of my existence at the time was I was an all-county athlete at the same time on the side - when no one was around - I was smoking ‘pot,’” he says.

McClintock’s parents divorced when he was a sophomore. Eddie’s dad raised him with a firm set of values, but his construction supply business kept him at work until 6 in the evening, leaving Eddie with time to kill after school.

Still, he graduated with a degree in business communications in his native Ohio and moved to California to workat his uncle’s insurance company. “I worked there for seven months and he said, ‘You know, I think you need to go to Hollywood. I think there’s other things out there for you.’ My uncle fired me. It hurt, but I knew it was the right thing. My heart wasn’t really in insurance.”

McClintock landed a job as a production assistant. “I swept up cigarette butts, got people coffee, drove trucks around and wasn’t particularly good at that either … I was, like, why am I doing this? But I needed some time to figure out what it was I wanted to do.When I finally kind of started to settle down a little bit somebody said, ‘You should try acting.’”

By that time McClintock was deep into alcohol and drugs. The lowest point in his life arrived when he sold his father’s high school ring to a crack dealer. “And by the time I got from the crack dealer to my apartment I’d already smoked it. I loved that ring, and I loved my dad. He is my hero. I’ve never told anyone that story.”

That incident, and the decision to become an actor, became the catalyst for McClintock to change his life. “Where my athletic background helps is I grew up with the ethic that you never quit. You never give up.” he says. “My dad’s a great purveyor of that mentality as well. He was an athlete. So I’ve always been, like, ‘You won’t beat me. I won’t let you beat me.’ I think it’s the thing that’s kept me alive. I mean seriously - with the drugs and alcohol. I’m not proud of that. I usually don’t tell people that because it has such a negative connotation. I haven’t had any of that for 20 years.”

McClintock has been happily married for seven years to Lynn Sanchez, who has a master’s degree in business administration and worked in the creative department of G4 TV. They met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. “I kinda chased her down a little bit and she said, ‘Who are you?What are you doing? Are you a stalker?’… She’s more Type A and I’m Type B. We kind of balance each other out,” he says.

Style, Pages 43 on 05/19/2013