Six-Pack to Stardom?

Even with military training, acting and modeling experience and his share of ex-girlfriends, Greg Plitt's resume didn't quite prepare him for his new job: trainer on Bravo's reality show Work Out.

"They said the show was 3 percent body fat and 97 percent drama," said Plitt by phone from his California home. "They were a little low on the drama side."

But the 30-year-old from Lutherville is more than used to stretching himself physically and was more than willing to give it a go professionally.

It's not long into his first episode before Plitt is shirtless on cable, flaunting his flauntable six-pack and making out with a model in a hot tub.

The "docu-series," as Bravo calls Work Out - which airs at 11 tonight - does involve some sessions with trainers, theoretically why fitness guru Plitt was chosen. Mostly, though, the man the TV show Extra named one of its "Hottest Eligible Bachelors" and Iron Man magazine called a "Cover Model Extraordinaire" may be trying to lift more eyebrows than weights.

In a news release, Bravo producers said of Plitt: "His body will have the male trainers envious and the female trainers salivating; his mere presence will heat up the gym, and he is determined to stir things up at Sky Sport & Spa."

He wasn't always interested in television, but he's long been used to the spotlight.

Before he was on a reality TV show, he was a wrestler, football player and golfer at the Gilman School. His mother, Janet, an interior designer, and his father, also named Greg, a real estate agent, raised him and his sister Virginia to be achievers.

Virginia Plitt graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1999 and is now finishing medical school. Greg Plitt went on to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2000 and served five years as an Army Ranger.

About a year and a half before he left the military in 2005, Captain Plitt was discovered in a Washington hotel lobby when he happened to stumble upon a convention of modeling agents. He headed to New York for his first professional photos, which two months later landed him on the cover of Muscle and Fitness magazine.

His acting interest grew from reading lines with an ex-girlfriend who was an actress. After a stint living in New York after the military, he decided about a year and a half ago to pack up his pit bull puppy Quest and drive cross-country to Los Angeles.

It wasn't long before he landed a role as Henderson on the soap opera Days of Our Lives and as a carpenter on HGTV's Designed to Sell. He also appeared briefly as a guard in The Good Shepherd, a 2006 movie that starred Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie.

On Work Out, Plitt's fellow trainers preview his entrance by flipping through one of his magazine spreads and speculating like school girls on what was or wasn't coursing through his mind, his heart and his veins. (Plitt says he's never been a steroid user.)

"He's the new dog and we have to sniff his butt," one said. No one on this show is channeling Shakespeare.

But Plitt takes nothing lying down. He even thumbs his nose a little at the Momma Bear, the fearsome spit of a woman named Jackie who owns Sky Sport & Spa and is Plitt's employer on the show. She frequently shows her teeth and claws.

Oh, the drama.

And this is the part that has his childhood friend Maakan "Tag" Taghizadeh shaking his head.

Plitt wasn't the type to ham for a camera as a kid, he said. With discipline from his father and support from his mother, Plitt and his sister were both the kinds to tackle the hardest things they could think to try.

"They kind of egged each other on to see who could achieve more," said Taghizadeh, now a doctor in Ohio. "I think he only went to West Point because she went to the Naval Academy."

Taghizadeh wasn't even sure at first if he could believe his old wrestling buddy on screen. Plitt's "just not a fake, he's not an L.A. kind of guy. His whole training philosophy is not about looking good in the mirror, it's about actually being in good shape."

But he said after Plitt took him to an acting class and he got to see him pretend, he doesn't think his friend has changed. He's just good at making others believe what he wants.

His mother, now living in Florida with his father, hopes it's all an act.

She recalled her sixth-grade son sneaking into the gym to work out with the high school boys so he could become a better wrestler and the straight-A student who was determined to serve his country.

Underwear model, cover boy and hot tubber takes some getting used to for a mother. Her first thought about Work Out: "Holy moly."

But still, she has no regrets about her role in his career. Thinking he needed a break from the group house he was living in at the time, she was the one who arranged for him to stay at the Marriott in Washington the weekend he was discovered.

"Our big things with the kids growing up were manners and goals," she said. "Have a goal and stick with it. I have no doubt he will stick with this. He wants to be a movie star."

>>>On TV Work Out premieres at 11 tonight on Bravo.

meredith.cohn@baltsun.com

Related topic galleries: Television Industry, Matt Damon, Newspaper and Magazine, Personal Service, Angelina Jolie, Wrestling, Hollywood (Los Angeles, California)

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