Getty Heir Misses Pasadena

Balthazar Getty, who's mainly acted in movies — such as Lord of the Flies, Lost Highway and Deuces Wild (opening Friday) — took a gamble on TV last year. Too bad his stint on producer Diane Keaton's short-lived nighttime soap, Pasadena, didn't pay off as well as he'd hoped.

"I wish [the Fox network] would have handled it better," Getty admits to TV Guide Online. "They blew a lot of smoke up our ass. They [still] haven't cancelled it."

Shelved indefinitely after just five airings, the spicy sudser had promise it'll never have the chance to realize. Most of Pasadena's cast — including star diva Dana Delany — have new pilots ready for the fall TV season. Getty himself co-stars with Martin Landau and Patrick Dempsey in ABC's hour-long drama pilot Rosebud.

"I had never done a pilot before Pasadena," the 27-year-old says. "The first couple of episodes were a little shaky for me, but the stuff that you didn't [get to] see was getting great. It just was getting better and better, and then they pulled it."

Getty played Nathaniel Greeley, a spoiled rich kid who struggled with drug addiction. He insists that, at first, he didn't realize how much the role mirrored his own troubled background as the great-grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. But how? Even their surnames are similar!

"You know, I'm really naive," he concedes. "I went into it and I didn't even think, 'Well, this is about a rich family.' It didn't even occur to me until, like, a couple of weeks into shooting the pilot. Then, I was like, 'Oh no! S---.'" Despite it all, he's made peace with the legacy that comes with his famous name. "I used to struggle with it more," Getty says. "But it is what it is. I'm proud of where I come from and I have an amazing family."