WITH AN EYE ON . . . : Arye Gross is more than happy to be a girl's best friend--especially if her name is 'Ellen'

WITH AN EYE ON . . . : Arye Gross is more than happy to be a girl’s best friend--especially if her name is ‘Ellen’

By N.F. MENDOZA

Dec. 18, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Do beards make the man? Not always.

“Ellen” producers thought actor Arye Gross’ goatee made his character, Adam, “smarmy.” So, off it came.

“I don’t know that facial hair can make a big impact on a person’s personality,” Gross says wryly, from an ABC publicist’s office in New York.

Gross’ beard was one of several changes producers made in the show this season. For starters, last year the series was called “These Friends of Mine.”

When first season co-stars Holly Fulger and Maggie Wheeler were written out of the script, Gross worried that he might be a casualty as well. “I just had a feeling that was the way they were going,” he says. “I didn’t know what they were going to do with (Adam).”

He’s glad to still be on board and pleased that the effort to develop a credible friendship between Adam and Ellen has been successful.

“I like the new additions, but I miss Holly and Maggie. They were tremendous actors,” he says.

The West Los Angeles native says he shares one thing with Adam: “Strangely enough, he looks exactly like me. And I think that’s about it.”

Gross, 34, says he’s got “a couple of years of perspective” on Adam, who recently celebrated his 32nd birthday on the show. After living “all over Los Angeles from Carthay Circle to Silver Lake,” Gross recently purchased a home in Westwood.

This season, Adam moved out of Ellen’s place and still struggles across the hallway. Gross is considerably more settled.

The acting bug bit him early on: “I knew as a kid. I thought it was as likely as becoming an astronaut. Even though I grew up in L.A., we didn’t know anyone in this business. In L.A., you were in show business or aerospace, which my father was.”

Gross’ Adam, whose friendship with Ellen never strays from the platonic, is someone the actor thinks viewers can relate to. “A lot of people have been where he is. He keeps changing directions and wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s like I’d be in that situation. He’s looking to save his life and has had a dozen different careers since the show’s start.”

Gross pursued drama in both high school and at UC Irvine, which he parlayed into work at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. Theater work led to features, including “Soul Man,” “The Opposite Sex “ and “A Midnight Clear.”

“It was great to find out you can really make a living out of doing this, and there’s no turning back for me now,” he says. “I find myself wondering what I might do instead of this and I can never come up with anything.”

His older siblings--a brother who’s a musician and a sister who’s a painter--are, by trade, a realtor and a neurologist. “My father was a scientist, but was also inspired in a creative way. We all have that artistic inclination. I just turned mine into work.”

Gross says he wasn’t specifically looking to work on a TV series, “but I worked with the show’s producers on ‘Soul Man.’ When they sent the script for this show, I laughed out loud.” A fan of series star Ellen Degeneres, he thinks the show is “finding itself.”

Thanks to the exposure that highly rated “Ellen” provides, Gross is no longer mistaken for the star of “Campus Man” (that was Cameron Dye) or one of the “Perfect Strangers” or Andrew McCarthy.

“Now if people say I look familiar, I’m coy,” he explains, relating a story of someone who asked, “Didn’t we go to high school together?” When Gross responded, “Well, I’m an actor, actually,” the response was, “No, we really went to high school together.”

Gross laughs. “I’d like to avoid that possibility of being embarrassed again.”

“Ellen” airs Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on ABC.