As Sam Winchester, one of the reluctant heroes of The WB Network's Tuesday hit "Supernatural," Jared Padalecki spends his time crossing the United States in search of things that go bump in the night.

Off camera, however, it takes quite a bit to spook Padalecki, a lanky, 23-year-old former Texan.

"By no means am I Mr. Tough, but I can't name any specific fear I have," he says. "I don't know if this qualifies as a superstition, but every time I step on a plane, I kiss my finger and touch the top of the doorjamb. I started doing that in high school when someone would run a red or yellow light. I don't know what that means."

Whether it's luck or plain old star quality, Padalecki is one of the fastest-rising young actors in Hollywood these days. Within a few months of his 2000 high-school graduation, he traded his hometown of San Antonio for Hollywood, and at 18 landed a major featured role on The WB's "Gilmore Girls" as Dean Forrester, the all-American boyfriend of Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel).

Padalecki knows the role of Dean was the kind of break any young actor would kill for, but he says he never really doubted he was born to be an actor.

"It sounds cheesy to say this out loud, but yeah, I just always felt like that was what I was here to do, to entertain and tell stories," Padalecki says. "My brother, who is three years older, was the star basketball player -- 6'6, 6'7, 220 pounds, big stud athlete. Then my father's next son -- me -- says, 'I want to quit sports and join theater.' That was down in Texas, remember, so I think my dad was a little shaken by that at first, but he was supersupportive nonetheless."

Padalecki was 12 when he got involved with his school's theater program, and by graduation, he was more than ready to try Hollywood.

Playing sweet-natured Dean on "Gilmore Girls" for five seasons not only helped Padalecki hone his acting chops but also built a substantial fan base among teen girls and their equally smitten moms, many of whom have followed the actor over to "Supernatural" and helped make the show one of the season's breakout hits.

"We were on location recently, and a little girl came onto the set with her mom, and she had baked me some brownies," Padalecki says, laughing. "She had read somewhere that I have a big sweet tooth. They had the information books from season one and two of the 'Gilmore Girls' DVDs and asked me to sign them. That show had a huge following among mothers and daughters, and I got a lot of positive feedback, except for when [Rory and I] broke up and I married [someone else] -- but that makes for good television."

While he has put his earlier series behind him, he admits he got a lump in his throat when he ran into "Gilmore Girls" creator and executive producer Amy Sherman-Palladino at a WB publicity event last summer.

"It touched me so much, because tears were coming to her eyes when she was talking about how proud she was of me," he says. "And I really felt like she and Dan (Palladino, another executive producer) were my career parents, grooming me to go off on my own course. I look at the early episodes now and just cringe and think, 'Why didn't they write me off? Why didn't they kill my character in the very next episode?' But they believed in me and supported me, and I will forever be thankful."

Had the stars aligned somewhat differently, Padalecki might be getting his career kicks these days in a very different role. In 2003, he filmed a pilot for "Young MacGyver," another adventure series on which The WB decided to pass.

Padalecki says he enjoyed "making some cool things out of quarters and bubble gum, the whole MacGyver thing" in that busted pilot, but he didn't lose any sleep when the project wasn't picked up as a series.

"I've found you can be a 'successful actor' if you book two jobs out of 100 auditions," he says. "I think Lauren Graham did something like eight pilots before she got 'Gilmore Girls,' which is perfect for her, so I'm of the frame of thought that everything that happens happens for a reason. I try to look at things optimistically.

"'Young MacGyver' was neat, and I got to do some cool stunts, but it didn't work out, and now I'm here on this show that I really connect with and I'm superexcited about, so it worked out for the better."

"Supernatural" sets out to spook the audience every week, but Padalecki is convinced it's the complicated family dynamic between him and his older TV sibling -- played by Jensen Ackles -- that keeps viewers tuning in.

"Sam is trying to figure out whether he has a choice in this," Padalecki says of his character. "He has fought it as long as he can, from the day he could get out of the house and away from his father and brother and the life he was born into, he has been trying to convince himself that he could just live a normal life. He finds out slowly but surely that he can't choose his own destiny."

Nor, it appears, can Padalecki escape his "Gilmore Girls" character altogether in "Supernatural." Through sheer perverse coincidence, Sam's brother is named Dean.

"Yeah, it's pretty funny," Padalecki says. "Every now and then someone will say, 'OK, Dean is over there,' and I'll take a little stutter step, then think, 'Oh, wait, I'm not Dean anymore.'"