Mark Valley's soap lessons: 'If you go into the shower, you might not come out.'

Mark Valley is currently the star of FOX's "Human Target" and is the veteran of many other primetime series --  "Fringe," "Boston Legal," "Pasadena" and "Keen Eddie."

But the real-life veteran of Operation Desert Storm counts the NBC daytime serial "Days of Our Lives" among his earliest, most interesting credits.

"I learned that if you go into the shower, you might not come out," he muses to Zap2it about his three years on the soap as Jack Deveraux in the mid-1990s.

"Matt Ashford (who would return to the show later) was Jack before me. He's, like, 6'2" with black hair, and he's kind of quirky and funny. Then there was me, 5'10" with blond hair, acting like Mr. Intense.

"Doing that show was fun, but I wanted to try some other things and take risks on doing primetime or movies ... so I went into the shower as Jack, then another actor came out.

"I remember turning down the contract, then they announced that Mark Valley was fired because they wanted to go with somebody younger. I was like, 'OK! Thanks, guys!'"

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