Entertainment

Everybody loves a tale in which the local boy makes good. It gets even better when the local boy stops and puts on a show for you as he shuttles between Hollywood and the Big Apple.

Dean Nolen was born in Dallas but went to high school in the West Texas town of Seminole. He's now back in Texas playing Lyndon B. Johnson in The Winner.

Mr. Nolen frequently performed on Dallas stages from1990 to 1992, when he was not long out of Hardin-Simmons University. Then he spent three years studying acting at the Yale School of Drama before getting a series of big breaks.

"I've lived between New York and Los Angeles for the last 13 or 14 years," he says. "A couple of years ago I gave up my New York apartment. That was the dumbest thing. I got so tired of LA, so I'm heading back home to New York."

That's where Mr. Nolen beat out 750 other actors to land the role of one of the three possible fathers in the original 2001 Broadway version of Mamma Mia! Lily Tomlin later handed him the Drama Desk Award he won as part of the ensemble in the off-Broadway Tabletop. And in 2003 he had a leading role in Theresa Rebeck's Pulitzer Prize finalist, Omnium Gatherum.

He's also guest starred on Crossing Jordan and on all three of the Law & Order franchises. Just before leaving California, he finished making a film with Tori Spelling and Tess Harper called Kiss the Bride.

Mr. Nolen has been back to Texas from time to time – his parents live in Waxahachie, and he has an aunt in Dallas – but he hadn't been on a Dallas stage between 1992 and the Dallas Theater Center's 2005 version of A Christmas Carol, in which he played Marley's ghost. He repeated the role in 2006 – about the time he was cast in The Winner without having auditioned.

The actor has prepared for playing Mr. Johnson by listening to hours of his speeches and even his telephone calls – noticing that the familiar, folksy accent was a lot less pronounced when the president was speaking in private.

Even though his Broadway debut was a featured role in a megahit musical, Mr. Nolen isn't really a trained singer.

"I'm first and foremost an actor, who happens to sing. If you grow up in church, as I did, you learn to sing," he says. "Musicals are such hard work. Having to coordinate being able to sing, walk, dance and talk makes me a little dyslexic."

Still, he did it all on Broadway for a year in Mamma Mia! And he'll be doing it again in Irving for the next three weeks.