"I had to call to thank you—all of you—at GQ for this photo shoot." That's Topher Grace speaking. And if you take a glance at the photos—of him and Victoria's Secret model Izabel Goulart—you'll understand.

But beyond simple manners, it was good of the 31-year-old actor to pick up the phone, because a lot of people had been wondering where the hell he's been lately. See, back in 2007, Grace got the role of a lifetime: the villain in Spider-Man 3. Then bang, poof, gone. Dude disappeared. He went from being the next Tom Hanks to off the Hollywood grid. "It wasn't a scheduled thing," he says. "I was on That '70s Show until I was 27, so I got a place in New York and crammed my entire twenties into a couple of years—doing things that I'm not going into detail about."

Fair enough. Manhattan conquered. We're just happy the young man is back, starring in fare as varied as this month's Valentine's Day and the Predator sequel he's currently shooting in Austin, Texas. But ask him what project he's most excited about and he'll happily tell you: a TV version of St. Elmo's Fire he's producing for ABC. "The first draft of the script just came in. I talked to [That '70s Show co-star] Ashton Kutcher a bunch about it, because he has a lot of TV-producing experience." Grace stops, reflects on how far he and his friend Ashton have come, and laughs. "And you know, his wife was in the original!"


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