CSI Star's Death Wish

Rory Cochrane may have shot himself in the foot before thieves put a bullet in his character's chest. Although CSI: Miami producers obliged his request to leave the show, there was a catch: He cannot do "any kind of television work — cable or otherwise" until 2008, he says, because he signed a six-year contract with the show.

The 31-year-old actor — who says he "couldn't really handle the grind anymore" — wasn't pleased with the way his character, Tim Speedle, was killed off in last month's season premiere. (He was fatally wounded when his gun malfunctioned during a shootout.) "It was lame," Cochrane says. "He got shot last year because of the same [gun malfunction]. It doesn't make sense. I mean, Speedle knows all these forensics things, and then he doesn't clean his gun?"

So has he committed career suicide? "Well, I never did TV before and I survived," says Cochrane, whose films include Dazed and Confused, Dogtown and Hart's War. Buena Vista Motion Pictures' casting director Marcia Ross agrees. "Rory is known in the casting community, so he'll probably go back to having the kind of career he had before CSI: Miami."