BOISE -- For actor William Petersen, who as Gil Grissom, probed prime-time crime death for almost nine years, there is life after CSI.

Petersen, who received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame earlier this year, recently left the hit CBS show -- and some hefty paychecks -- to pursue his first love: the stage.

"I felt there was nothing more I could do on CSI," Petersen told 2 News in an exclusive interview. "I've done all I wanted to (on the show), and I wanted to get back to the theater, where I started."

Petersen, who graduated from Bishop Kelly High School in Boise, fell in love with the theater at Idaho State University and continued to study acting in 1974 at Boise State University's campus abroad program in the Basque Country under the guidance of BSU drama professor John Woodworth.

He was in Boise recently to shoot a public service announcement for Ada County Drug Court.

(Full disclosure: I've been friends with Billy Petersen for more than 30 years, and attended BSU's Onate, Spain program with him. I also acted -- poorly -- in a BSU student production of Hamlet with Petersen, who was great. I played King Claudius; Petersen, Hamlet. Despite my pathetic acting, we had a successful press review of the play in the bag. Another personal close friend of ours wrote the glowing freelance review for the Idaho Statesman. )

Petersen has performed in many movies and plays but CSI was his first extended television series, made him wealthy and propelled him into global star status.

The famously bow-legged thespian says playing the same quirky character on television for so long is kind of creepy.

"I actually started to feel like I was spending more time as Grissom than as myself," he said.

Despite the split personality problem, Petersen says CSI was a wonderful experience and over the years, he helped the show generate a social phenomenon known as The CSI Effect, which critics say exaggerates forensic science but supporters say makes the science more understandable.

"I've had lots of lawyers over the years say this has made it really difficult for us," Petersen said. "They tell me the juries think we're going to show them a TV show. But by the same token, it has raised the consciousness of the country about forensic science."

Have we seen seen the last of Gil Grissom? Maybe not.

"I have jury duty in a couple of weeks," Petersen said. "I'm hoping they may decide that maybe Gil Grissom shouldn't sit on the jury and they'll let me go. So it's back to the split personality thing, I ask, you're going to jury duty as Grissom not Petersen.
"Exactly," said Grissom or Petersen, whichever one was answering at the moment.