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- guardian.co.uk, Sunday January 30 2000 00.46 GMT
The departure of gorgeous George Clooney from ER left millions of US viewers under the weather last year. As Clooney moved to a different part of the Warner Bros studio lot to make movies, his loss was keenly felt on the show, ratings even dipped slightly towards the end of last season in the states.
The arrival of Goran Visnjic (pronounced Vish-nick), however, has set pulses racing again. Predictably, he's a mysterious, darkly handsome medic; skilled at mending cracked bones and breaking hearts. As Dr Luka Kovic, a Croatian survivor of the Bosnian war, his first few episodes saw him enter Cook County's A&E department with aplomb.
In the first episode of the new series on Wednesday, he strides into the ER bearing an injured small girl in his arms. Over the next few weeks viewers will see him inciting a wife-batterer to hit him so the man gets a psychiatric referral; pretending to be a priest to comfort a dying patient and making Nurse Hathaway (Julianna Marguiles), last seen lamenting the loss of Clooney, swoon with girlie infatuation.
Marguiles knows better than anyone if Visnjic is capable of taking over the heartthrob mantle for which he was obviously hired. 'I have never seen Goran as filling in George Clooney's shoes. Goran fills in his own shoes quite nicely,' she told People magazine. Inspired, the listening journalist later waxed lyrical about his 'Heathcliffian visage'.
The six-foot-four Croatian caught the eye of Hollywood after his performance in Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo. He played the war correspondent Stephen Dillane's driver. Director Griffin Dunne spotted him the 1997 US premiere of the film and asked him to audition for the witch comedy Practical Magic. The role of Nicole Kidman's redneck was rewritten for Visnjic as an Eastern European. Back home in Croatia, Visnjic has already enjoyed national fame. He is one of the country's most popular actors, mainly due to his long-running performance as Hamlet at the annual Dubrovnik Summer Festival. His performances won him three national Best Actor Awards.
Visnjic's popularity was helped by his pre-fame decision voluntarily to join the Croatian Army in 1991 for a three-month stint -'I felt I had to defend my country, that's normal.' He left to take up his place at Zagreb's Academy of Dramatic Arts. His older brother replaced him. (The army discouraged siblings from serving simultaneously).
Visnjic probably holds the unique distinction among putative Hollywood stars of having served in a conflict. His widely heralded role during the Bosnian war has apparently seeped into the consciousness of ER writers. He's become the Mdecin Sans Frontires representative at the hospital, charging into wards armed only with his stethoscope and a smile. George couldn't do that, but Gorgeous Goran can.
Five things you should know about Goran Visnjic
1 US Vogue magazine recently called him 'the Tom Cruise of Croatia'.
2 Of fame, he says: 'Lots of people want to be movie stars, but they don't realise that to be a celebrity is not that beautiful if you can't go the store and buy toothpaste.'
3 He grew up in a small town on the Adriatic Sea on a heavy diet of American movies.
4 He lives in Los Angeles with his sculptor wife, Ivana.
5 His hobbies are fencing, swimming and diving.
