(left) photo Courtesy of Telemundo; (right) photo by Trae Patton Courtesy of NBC

Now in his sixth season as police department crime scene investigator Eric Delko on CSI: Miami, Adam Rodriguez is living the good life in Los Angeles, but the days when he struggled to make a buck are still very vivid in his memory. “I was a bellman at a hotel, I did construction, I delivered pizza and fried chicken,” he recalls. “The worst by far was cleaning toilets at Penn Station. The money was like $16 an hour, great at the time, but I did it one day and I quit.”

Rodriguez was on an uncertain career path, having ruled out several careers by choice or force. A high school athlete, he suffered a back injury that nixed his notion of baseball stardom. A career in the air force was crossed off the list by bad eyesight. Interested in business, he became a stockbroker trainee for a while, but realized it wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life.

He had taken some acting classes in high school, just for something to do, and rediscovered theater in community college. He kept working odd jobs to pay for acting classes until a lucky break in 1996—a one-line role as a cop on NYPD Blue, thanks to his father’s old military buddy who became a producer on the show. That led to a regular role—a cop again—on the series Brooklyn South, followed by Felicity, Resurrection Blvd., and Roswell. Rodriguez also had a featured part in Jennifer Lopez’s video for “If You Had My Love.” He was tapped to co-star after the two met at a party.

These days Rodriguez, 32, a New York native who grew up in the suburb of New City, goes home to visit his family—he’s 3/4 Puerto Rican and 1/4 Cuban—as often as he can, but even though they’re proud of him, he doesn’t get the star treatment...