Promising new talent Mark Famiglietti makes his primetime series debut with "Young Americans."

The son of a pharmaceutical executive and an office manager, Famiglietti was born in Providence, RI, and raised in Clinton, CT, where frequent family trips to the Goodspeed Opera House sparked his interest in performing. However, it wasn't until his teen years that he shifted to the other side of the footlights in Goodspeed's "An Evening with Max Showalter and Friends" and won the Goodspeed Guild Musical Theatre Award for his performance.

In high school, he was class president in his junior and senior years, captain of the baseball team, a member of the band and chorus and co-announcer of school football and basketball games. On winning a small part in his school's production of "Guys & Dolls," he added drama classes to his curriculum and began to exercise acting and singing muscles. Leading roles followed in local theater productions of "Bye, Bye Birdie" and "The Music Man" and school plays including "Kiss Me Kate" and "Once upon a Mattress."

Now bent on an acting career, he began attending auditions in New York while studying at New York University as a drama major, where he studied with the Atlantic Theatre Company. During his second semester, he put college on hold and headed for Hollywood after being cast as Deering High's resident heartthrob, Nick Hammer, on the Saturday morning teen show "Hangtime." He also guest-starred on The WB comedy "Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane" and co-stars as a friendly bartender in the February-slated TV movie "Bunny Girls" starring Marilu Henner and Rhea Perlman.

Famiglietti, who loves the stock market, aims to go back to school someday to study economics or marketing, but he's aiming towards show business success as an actor, writer and producer. Offstage, he devotes considerable time to writing and has completed two screenplays and stays fit by working out daily and running 35-40 miles a week.

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