Unlike his alter ego, Chris Ramsey, a born "have," Nolan North wasn't handed a lifestyle of the eventually rich and soon-to-be famous on a silver platter. But to hear him tell it . . . .

He was "discovered" by a manager while doing stand-up and plays in New York. "He said I had a good look and suggested I try Hollywood for a month," the actor recalls. "I had an open-ended airline ticket, but after 10 days, I landed a job as a bartender and decided I was staying."

Wait -- it gets better. "Then," he continues, "after just seven months of auditioning, I was lucky enough to land this job." This is where the distinction between the PC wiseacre and his portrayer comes into focus. Whereas Chris' savings account overfloweth, notes North, "I had $14 in the bank when I landed the PORT CHARLES job. I'm far from being the rich kid who never had to work for anything."

Furthermore, he adds, "I was raised with a strict moral code that would never allow me to live my life the way that Chris does.

So naturally, North relishes his role. "It's an actor's dream to play someone like Chris Ramsey," he asserts. "Chris is starting off a little bit in the hole morally. When you come down to it, human nature is to look out for number one. It's nice to be able to come here every day and portray that side of me. I get to live vicariously through my character.

Would that Chris could have lived a little of North's life vicariously. Before the actor started hitting them out of the park on PC, he worked diligently toward a career in baseball. Make that, very diligently. "As pitchers at the University of North Carolina do, we would run five miles and then do wind sprints," he recalls. "Everyone would go home afterwards, but I would stay and do more running, more shoulder exercises."

"I was driven to the point of fanaticism," he realizes now. "That is, I was until I hurt my shoulder."

Career number two brought North one step closer to the hallowed halls of Port Charles General Hospital. It all started when his teammate, Paul Schuey, currently a relief pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, took him to a Chapel Hill, N.C., comedy club. At the end of the show, Schuey told North, "You're funnier than these guys. Why don't you do this?"

So, North approached the manager, who challenged him to make her laugh on the spot. He did. "She said I could open up for them the next week," he remembers. "My face flushed, and I thought, 'O my God! Now I have to come up with an act!"

He did, he says, adding, "As it turned out, my first time was pretty good, and they asked me to come back."

Mind you, his routine was nothing like acerbic Dr. Ramsey's; it was lighter-hearted, more fun. "I started talking about things in life that I found interesting -- like the bottled water craze that came out about that time," he says. "I noticed that Evian spelled backwards is naive. It was like Jerry Seinfeld, but not as good."

Even so, North wouldn't mind if Chris lightened up a little. "He's very smooth, and he has a devilish, playful side that can be funny," the actor observes of his counterpart. "But his humor is more of the wry, slick, sarcastic type than mine is."

"Chris is a very serious surgeon who is driven to prove something to others and himself," he adds. "Sometimes that gets lost on people."

None of what now is happening to North -- not his landing of his big gig nor the potential for his future -- is lost on him, however. "This is the best start that Nolan North could ever hope for," he marvels. "Maybe it will lead to something bigger down the line, but right now I just want to concentrate on becoming the best actor I can be by working hard and trying to learn more every day."

"I've always felt that people who live in the past or think too much about the future miss the present," he concludes. "I don't intend to do that."