For 11 seasons on the TV series 7th Heaven,  Stephen Collins played The Rev. Eric Camden, a Protestant minister who headed a family of seven.

But Collins had a long and impressive acting resume before that, including TV shows and movies.  He was in the first Star Trek movie in 1979.

But when I met him in 1994, it was to talk about a novel he had written, a thriller called Eye Contact. 

And given the legal troubles Collins faced a decade later the subject matter now sounds a little problematic. More on that later.