Rick Fox is coming to terms with losing his mantle as “that guy who played for the Lakers.”

The three-time NBA championship winner started out with roles in HBO’s prison drama “Oz” and Spike Lee’s basketball drama “He Got Game,” while still playing for the Boston Celtics. Since retiring from the Lakers in 2004, he’s managed to make the jump from sports to full-time acting with a quiet degree of success.

No Michael Jordan-style space jamming, or muscle-bound action roles a la The Rock (oops, we mean Dwayne Johnson); Fox has worked most frequently on the small screen with quirky, recurring roles on “Dirt,” “One Tree Hill” and “Ugly Betty.”

Now, Fox has joined forces with Tyler Perry, the near-unstoppable playwright, director and producer for “Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns”—a comedy in which Fox plays Harry, a down-and-out former basketball player (natch) who’s trying to turn his life around.

Metromix sat down with Fox to hear his thoughts on training camps, playing his ex-wife’s lover, and how he jinxed this year’s Super Bowl.

How did you get involved with Tyler Perry? You must have been familiar with his films?
He actually ran me over with his car, almost. By accident! I was out working with my trainer, and we were running down Sunset Plaza Drive. Just as we were crossing the street, Tyler happened to be coming down the road in his white Bentley and he almost hit us in the crosswalk. [Laughs] You know that saying you can’t get run over in Hollywood?

That’s a hell of coincidence.
I’m telling you. [Laughs] But that’s my life. Things have been like that. I continually find myself blessed. Somehow things just line up, and I very rarely have any control over it.

Your character in the film, Harry, is interested in helping Angela Bassett’s son Michael get a spot in a basketball summer camp. You went through the same type of system, right?
Yeah. When I was spotted, I was guarding Lloyd Daniels—he was like the New York City LeBron James. Back in those days, the gym would be surrounded by head coaches who would come in themselves to see the kids play. And on that day [University of North Carolina coaching legend] Dean Smith had come to see us play. And who happened to be sitting next to Dean Smith, but my high school JV coach.

Coach Smith didn’t have his glasses on, so he turned to the program and says to my coach, “I don’t have my glasses, can you tell me, who that kid is? Number 12? The one who’s guarding Lloyd Daniels.” And my JV coach turns to him and says “I’ll tell you exactly who that is.” It was those camps that got me to the next level.

Part of your guest role on “Ugly Betty” involved love scenes with your ex-wife Vanessa Williams. Do you think somewhere a screenwriter was cackling into their laptop as they wrote those scenes, knowing that you two had been married?
There were definitely some elements of “Do you actually think we’d get him to do this?” [Laughs] Obviously, they ran it by Vanessa, but she said it was all right. Not many divorced couples get along like we do. We have a great relationship that way.

I’m not going to be a character actor tomorrow. I’m still bridging that gap between yesterday as an athlete and today as an actor. But there’s a whole new generation of kids coming up now, who know me only as the characters I play.

They don’t have any perception of you as “the Laker guy.”
I was crossing the street the other day, and a girl goes, “Hey, you’re that guy who was on ‘Dirt’!” And she goes, “That was so cool, man, you got fucked in the ass!” And I was like, “Yessss…that’s right!” [Laughs] I had this moment where I thought, oh man, I’m an actor now. The roles I’m choosing are going to define me. So I had to just smile and say, “Thanks for watching!”

Both the Celtics and the Lakers are doing quite well this year. They’ve played twice and the Celtics have won both times. If they meet in the post-season, who are you pulling for?
I’m a Laker. I put six years into the Celtics—six hard years, and they were all years of decline in terms of the results—but I had success in L.A., and I live in L.A. now. I wish I would have lived in this era as a basketball player, because I grew up watching the Celtics and the Lakers in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. There was this incredible energy from that East Coast/Wets Coast clash. My son lives in Boston, he plays out there and goes to school there. What I am is a Red Sox and Patriots fan, but I’m still a Laker.

Oh man. That Super Bowl.
I was there! Brady-jerseyed out. I was sitting in the Gatorade box and Peyton Manning was right there, so I respectfully kept my jacket zipped up and I think it’s the reason why we lost. Because I didn’t wear my Patriots colors proudly.

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