Michael Pitt might be living the glamorous life now, but his struggling-actor days in New York sound about as cushy as Survivor gone slummin'. When he moved to the city at 16, he lived with nine other guys in a one-bedroom in Chinatown.

Just duet: Cheek to cheek with the titular Hedwig in Angry Inch. "We had to stack our mattresses after we were done sleeping," he says. "It was pretty nasty." And he subsisted for weeks at a time on rice. "You could buy a potato-sack-size bag of it for three bucks, so I just ate rice."

Then, while acting in an off-Broadway play, the Jersey boy was plucked from obscurity--and his all-starch diet--to guest as high school student Henry Parker on Dawson's Creek. Pitt spent a year as the football jock with a heart of gold who tries to win the love of Jen Lindley. But as is often the case when boy finally gets girl, he must dump her before the ratings drop.

Now comes Pitt's first major film, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, based on the off-Broadway hit. Pitt, who plays rock star Tommy Gnosis, is a teen heartthrob and the object of female adoration, only most of the loving in this movie is coming from Hedwig, a middle-aged transsexual with Farrah Fawcett wigs and a slammin' set of vocal cords.

Which got us to wondering...

Rock star or actor: Who has more fun? "Probably rock star. Well, I don't know; it's probably more fun to play a rock star than to actually be one."

Yeah. Did he hear about A.J. Mclean in rehab? "Really? Hey, if I were a Backstreet Boy, I'd be drinking, too. My character, Tommy Gnosis, is like a rock version of the Backstreet Boys, a manufactured rock star."

Everyone's raving about the glam-rock outfits. "Well, Tommy's really pretty goth by the time he becomes a rock star--very Manson. I go to goth clubs and like some goth music, but it's not really my thing. It's a little too flashy. Walking around in the low-cut pants at the end, I felt like they were going to burst at any moment.

So, basically, he went from Dawson's Creek to falling in love with a rock 'n' roll drag queen.

Hit and run: Making his case with Michelle Williams on Dawson's.

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to shock people, but it was more just a good project that came along. And after Dawson's, all of a sudden I had a choice of what I wanted to do."

On Dawson's, he was a jock, but we heard football really wasn't his thing. "Whenever I had to wear the helmet, I wanted to go back and tell them to get someone else to do it. I sucked at throwing the football--I never played. I was the kid under the bleachers."

Has he gotten flack for the way his character Henry dumped Jen? "I didn't even know. I was gone, and I don't really watch the show. Someone came up to me on the street and asked why I dumped her, and I was like, 'I did?'

Does he get a lot of attention from fans? "I get a lot of stares. Last year, I was on 42nd Street with friends, and a group of girls chased us into the subway. I was scared shitless."

What's up next? "I'm in this Barbet Schroeder movie called Fool Proof, with Sandra Bullock, Ben Chaplin and Ryan Gosling. I don't know if they're going to keep the name. I just saw a screening last night where they called it Murder by Numbers."

Will he be back on Dawson's? "Probably not. [Laughs.] Maybe if they offered me a lot of money, I'd put the helmet back on."