From the outside looking in

Tim Daly is wearing a watch with a face so big he could sling it around his neck and join Public Enemy.

It's apt, because the actor has packed more life into his 53 years than most.

And time has been kind to him.

He looks at least 10 years younger.

"Having a childish brain helps," he quips.

His youthfulness is all the more surprising because Daly, best known these days as the alternative medicine-practising Dr Pete Wilder on Private Practice, has not always been kind to himself.

He has spent a good deal of his off-screen life beating himself up, physically with narcotics and alcohol, and psychologically, with crippling self-doubt.

The latter is a habit he has never conquered.

"I'm incredibly self-conscious.

"I always seem to be outside myself, watching the movie of my life and wondering how I'm going.

"And it drives me insane.

"When I'm acting I lose that and I can be somebody else and that's my big relief."

It's hard to find evidence of the crushing shyness he insists he suffers from.

In person, he is warm and charismatic as he chats in a nondescript room not far from the Private Practice set in Los Angeles.

Watching Wilder's transformation this season, from non-committal ladies' man to responsible wannabe father, it's as though the doctor is evolving into Daly.

The actor and his wife, actress Amy Van Nostrand, have two children in their 20s.

And yes, he's used to getting sideways glances when he's seen with his daughter in the street.

"I really am more like a woman because my children are grown up and they are out of the house and I'm like sitting around the kitchen table weeping that they are so selfish to grow up and leave me alone," he laughs.

It's a weird cosmic joke that his key roles are related to flying and substance abuse.