Rise to Fame
The Fox show Profit lasted a few episodes in 1996 before viewer outrage got it cancelled. Audiences called the character 'Satan in a Suit' and flooded affiliates with complaints. Critics now cite it as a precursor to The Sopranos. Pasdar got there through a football injury at Florida, Lee Strasberg training, and a handful of early film roles. Heroes in 2006 finally gave him the mainstream audience Profit should have delivered a decade earlier.
In the Spotlight
The Dixie Chicks song 'Gaslighter' is reportedly about him. Pasdar married Natalie Maines in 2000; their split turned into a two-year court battle. He asked for $44,076 a month in spousal support, challenged a prenup he claimed not to remember signing, and tried to freeze unreleased Dixie Chicks recordings over a confidentiality dispute. He lost. Since Heroes, he's kept working in genre TV as Glenn Talbot on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and has voiced Iron Man across multiple Marvel animated series.
Side Notes
His father was an Iranian-American cardiac surgeon; his mother was German-born. He ended up at the University of Florida on a football scholarship, switched to acting after a sports injury, and trained at Lee Strasberg in New York. Tony Scott liked his audition enough to write him into Top Gun in 1986. A year later, Near Dark cast him as the human lead in what's now considered one of the smarter vampire movies ever made. None of that made him famous. Jim Profit almost did.