Not surprisingly, Goldin would cop to the charge of being a perfectionist -- to a nearly obsessive degree. "Never act, just be. I catch myself acting and it makes me sick. I'll down like five glasses of water, breathe in and out a lot. I used to go have a cigarette but I quit that, so now I go eat my Twix bars and I calm down; then I go back and I try it again. You cannot be perfect when you are doing this almost every day, but you can come close. I did over 700 hundred performances of Grease on Broadway and even on my last night I was trying to tweak my performance. There are days when I will be wiped out, or I have the flu or bronchitis when I am doing the show. But those have been some of my best days. I study everybody, every single day -- in diners and restaurants, on the train, car services, on the airplane. I study myself, what I say. Let me put it this way: When I learn to blush on cue, my work will be close, not done, but close to perfect. This is the longest-running show in history and I am not about to be the guy [who sinks it]. I am going to be a soldier for this show and for my own personal satisfaction."

Even when he takes vacation, it's not your "soap star goes to Club Med" romp. Goldin's most recent sojourn was to Africa for several weeks on behalf of The Gabriel Project, a charity that seeks to treat Third World children who suffer from heart disease. "We saved the lives of 23 children this year who needed open-heart surgery. Before, we only saved nine children in 13 years. We decided to get off our asses and go there ourselves to make things happen. It was very emotional for me, to get away and let it be about others. I spent time living with the actual Masai tribe in Tanzania, which is the poorest country in all of Africa. They make their huts out of cow dung. It sounds terrible. I was in the schoolhouse, which is not a real schoolhouse. It has mud floors and walls. It was an amazing experience."

Working so closely with sick children would be enough to stoke anyone's paternal instincts, "But I have those anyway," Goldin offers. "I really do like kids. I don't even have a girlfriend now, so I have no idea when that is going to happen." He was briefly married to a British TV personality, whom he met at a Broadway play last year, but the marriage was annulled. Goldin characterizes it as a post-9/11 relationship. "It felt like the world was coming to an end, so we got caught up in this romantic whirlwind," he muses. "Your heart has a mind of its own sometimes, and I've always been one to follow my heart. But we were not meant to be together for the rest of our lives. She's still a great girl." Thrust back onto the singles scene, Goldin realizes that the prospect of parenthood is now farther afield than he originally thought. "But I don't mind if I become a parent in my late 30s. I don't even mind if I wait all the way to my 40s, because then I will be a full person. Maybe my perspective will be that much clearer and I can be a better teacher."

Goldin hesitates when asked why he pushes himself so hard to succeed. "I do it for me. I don't do it for my executive producer. Maybe I do a lot of it for Beth, because she does it for me, and that's the truth. I think it is the way my mother raised me. I went to a bunch of prep schools growing up.

"I probably was a handful to raise. But I always look at life like a gigantic bicycle race, like the Tour de France. I will never get off this bicycle. I must learn to repair the bike, put in the air, do the oil, change the tires, the whole thing. But I will always be pedaling, until I drop dead. So don't count on me getting out of the race."