Kiefer Sutherland can't pinpoint the exact moment Jack Bauer became a living, breathing creature, but he thinks it happened sometime around Day 4.
"Before that, people would come up and say, 'I love this movie you did' or 'I love your work,' but suddenly I was getting, 'I love Jack Bauer,'" he says during an interview in Hollywood.
Dressed in expensive-looking jeans and a white T-shirt, Sutherland looks happier and better rested than the counterterrorism agent he plays on 24, but then again, who doesn't? It probably helps that his show, coming off its most successful ratings season yet, is up for 12 Emmys, the most nominations for any TV series. Sutherland landed his fifth straight nomination for lead actor in a drama, a feat he insists he's only partly responsible for. "Sometimes it's like I have nothing to do with Jack Bauer anymore," he says with a most un-Bauerlike grin. "It's almost like I've become a conduit or his brother or something."
After five sleepless seasons spent averting Armageddon after sweaty Armageddon, Jack Bauer has secured his place in the pantheon of TV characters whose influence extends beyond prime time. In a post-9/11 age, Jack is a new archetype of American fearlessness, an unwavering force for unsettled times, a guy you want to be (or be with) when the Homeland Security level turns blood red. As 24 executive producer Howard Gordon says, without irony, "Jack suffers to save the rest of us, and that makes him a hero to all mankind." Or as Sutherland puts it, "When the New York Times starts talking about what Jack Bauer would do, you know you're in very weird territory."
Fresh from his first script meeting for the sixth season, which premieres on Fox in January, Sutherland, 39, kicks up his snakeskin cowboy boots and lights a cigarette before tackling a mission even CTU might shy away from — figuring out what makes Jack tick.
The analysis begins with a confession: "I'm terrified to get back into Jack Bauer's world again. I could never do what he does, not even close," Sutherland says. "Sometimes I think, 'Thank god I'm not the one running around trying to save the world.'" And yet, Sutherland says he has grown "increasingly connected to Jack" emotionally, even as nearly every other character on 24 has betrayed him, drifted away or died.