E!: In the fall of 1992, 31-year-old David James Elliott, burnt out on Hollywood and heavily in debt, spent his last $2,000 on a soul-searching trip to the Bahamas with his pregnant wife, Nanci. The gamble paid off.
A rejuvenated Elliott survived a series of nerve-wracking auditions for the syndicated television series The Untouchables. He nailed the part.
DJE: They said, "Okay, we're going to shoot the pilot. We want you to leave, like, tomorrow. 'Cause the pilot was shooting right then and that's why I had to go to Chicago. So we had to leave the next day.
Nanci: We set up a little home there and it was great. It saved us.
E!: Paramount TV chairman Kerry McCluggage ..
Kerry McCluggage: It was important to him on a number of levels. I mean, one was that as related to his personal life, but professionally, it was a little bit of a rebirth for him.
E!: The rebirth came just in time. Nanci went into labour on March 15, 1993.
Nanci: He was amazing in the delivery room. I had a 32-hour delivery, 32 hours of labour. He was the one, "Work harder, work harder!". He was great. He got me through it. He never balked at the challenge.
He just ... it was a challenge to him to be a good Dad and he got all the books, like, How to be a Good Father, How to Have a Smarter Baby, ... and he read them all. And he'd come home from work, and that would be what he was doing at work. That became the most important thing in his life.
DJE: The thing that the show did give for me is, we were able to have Stephanie in Chicago and I was able to be there for the birth and I was able to be there for the first couple years of her life as a real part of the family.
Nanci: David was, for the first two years of her life, he was with her all the time. He was at the birth. He was home all the time. So it was really a blessing.
E!: The
Untouchables not only provided David the opportunity to bond with his
new daughter, the series also raised his profile in Hollywood. When the show
was cancelled in 1995, the 34-year-old actor was quickly snatched up by producers
for a recurring role in the white-hot series, 
Melrose
Place.
David's dramatic turn on Melrose Place was followed by an equally high-profile guest-shot on television's top-rated show, Seinfeld.
DJE: Which was like, amazing. I mean, I went in and I read, and then they were like, "Okay, you got the job. Come to the reading right now."
E!: Elliott's sitcom debut was almost over before it began.
DJE: I got the feeling they were looking at me like I was a train wreck about to happen. And I thought, oh my God!
Howard Fine: He was aware that he wasn't getting any laughs, and he actually came in the middle of filming, on his lunch hour, to work with me.
DJE: And then my agency said after it aired, the phone rang off the hook. "We didn't know he could do comedy."
E!: The callers were out of luck. Paramount wanted Elliott for a new military drama called JAG.
Kerry McCluggage: We all remembered David from The Untouchables.
Don Bellisario, the writer/producer involved with JAG, who also did Magnum and Quantum Leap and Airwolf, was his champion in terms of getting this role.
E!: Executive producer Donald P. Bellisario ...
DPB: And so when I was casting JAG, I put him on the list of people I wanted to see.
E!: Bellisario, a former Marine, thought that David was perfect for the role of a steely Navy pilot turned investigator. Well, almost perfect.
DPB: I called him back four times because he had everything that Selleck had. He had the looks; he was a good actor; and the only thing I didn't see in him right off the bat was the humour that Selleck had. And David's a Canadian and you gotta dig for the humour a little bit with Canadians.
DJE: He told a joke. So maybe he was trying to test me. I wasn't sure. But he's also looking at me, like, how funny is it, pal?
DPB: One day, it just clicked. He got the kind of humour I was looking for. And he delivered it. And when he did, I knew he was the guy.
DJE: But then they had to cast the woman. So I had to keep going back to NBC and Paramount to read with these women. Now at the time my head's telling me, "... though they say you've got the job, they could suddenly go, 'You know what? He's really not that good.'" So it was like I had to keep auditioning endlessly and I had to keep coming up with the goods.
DPB: And I kept telling him, "David, you have the part. It's okay. You have the part."
E!: JAG, short for Judge Advocate General, debut in September 1995 on NBC. The show combined rivetting action and courtroom drama. The demanding production quickly took a toll on its star.
DPB: He works extremely hard. Any show I make is difficult for the star of the show because I tend to make shows in which they're in every scene.
E!: Bellisario worked as hard as Elliott, constantly re-writing episodes.
DJE: The worst it ever got, I got the teaser and half the first Act of the show ... 7 o'clock the morning of the day we were starting at 8:30.
And I go, "Where's this story going?" "We don't know yet, it's being written."
Nanci: There's one thing you can say about it. He's incredibly disciplined. And he will rise to the challenge.
E!: While David's enthusiasm remained high, network support did not. In May of 1996, after months of 16-hour days, JAG came to an abrupt end.
DJE: So you got to keep pumping and hoping that maybe you'll get another order, and then we got picked up for the final 22, and then they dropped the show.
It was not the most joyous of times.