"Lex is a great judge of character, especially with Clark. He sees something special in Clark..." Smallville's Michael Rosenbaum talks about playing the bald and beautiful Lex Luthor in The WB's hit series.

Everyone told Michael Rosenbaum that Smallville would be a hit, but after years in the business the actor knew better than to buy into it. "I guess I'd done so many shows and a few movies where people said, 'This is going to be a hit,' that I took it with a grain of salt," explains Rosenbaum. "After being in a lot of failures I thought to myself, 'Why get my hopes up?' But when I saw the Smallville pilot, when I went in to do some looping for the show, I felt blown away. I called my friend Dave and my family members and I said, 'This is a hit, mark my words.' I just knew it. I thought it was a quality show."

But the actor's been around Hollywood long enough to know that doesn't guarantee success. "Would it catch on and hold on and have continued success? I didn't know about that. I thought if the writers could maintain the quality and the writing, that it would be successful. And we were blessed with that. Yesterday I got a copy of Mad Magazine and Tom (Welling), Kristin (Kreuk) and I are on the cover. I'm Lex Luthor as Alfred E Neuman. Then I thought, 'Now I've made it.' That's what it took for me."

Rosenbaum's portrayal of the young Lex Luthor has had a lot to do with the show's success; as much as fans love the fledgling relationship between Clark Kent and Lana Lang, there's more dramatic heat to be found in the unlikely bond between Lex and Clark. Ever since Clark saved him from the jaws of death Lex has been trying to work out how his friend did it, while we all know the pair are destined to become mortal enemies. An extra layer of tension is added because it's clear that Lex envies Clark's warm bond with his adoptive parents, which shows that he is at least a shrewd judge of character.

"I absolutely agree with that," Rosenbaum says. "In fact, I've said it a lot, that Lex is a great judge of character, especially with Clark. Even though everyone else sees Clark as this awkward teenager with problems, Lex sees past that. He sees something special in Clark. I think that's why their friendship is so strong. They both have their problems and their secrets that they can't really talk about, even with each other. Being in his father's shadow, Lex just knows what's good and bad. I don't think Lex has a lot of respect for his father. He spends a lot of time alone and reading books. The few people in this world that you meet and like, you get them right away. Lex is a good judge of character and he got Clark right away."

When Clark Kent, later Superman, was growing up in Smallville, he had plenty of good friends around him, Lana Lang among them. Kristin Kreuk explains to Ian Spelling how she's the new Maid of Might.

It's a bird… it's a plane… it's a young woman who's about to be a star. Kristin Kreuk plays Lana Lang on the new series Smallville, which has garnered some of the most glowing reviews of any freshman show launched in the 2001-2002 TV season, and that's ahead of its October 16 premiere date. And the consensus is that the 20-year-old will emerge as one of the brightest talents on the entertainment landscape.

"I try not to think about that," Kreuk says. "I really love my anonymity. It's something I prize and cherish, and I have my entire life. It will be interesting to have people know me without knowing me, but living in Vancouver, shooting in Vancouver, I feel like I'm not going to have to go through half as much as I would if I were living in LA. I get to stay at home. I've got my friends and my family to ground me, not that I need them to ground me, because I'm a very grounded person. But they're there and they have nothing to do with acting, nothing to do with that world. So I have no opportunity to get caught up in it. I'd hate myself if I ever got caught up in it."

Kreuk, however, has allowed herself to get caught up in the world of Smallville, which gives audiences the latest take on the Superman mythos. Smallville follows the adventures of a young Clark Kent (Tom Welling, of Judging Amy and Special Unit 2) during his small town high school days, before he learned to fly, before he mastered all of his other powers, before he upped and relocated to Metropolis. He lives with his loving and protective adoptive parents, Jonathan (John Schneider of The Dukes of Hazzard) and Martha Kent (Annette O'Toole, who portrayed Lana Lang opposite Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent/Superman in Superman III).

He hangs out with best pals Pete Ross (Sam Jones III of CSI and The Nightmare Room) and Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack of Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves), befriends future nemesis Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum of Urban Legend) and pines for the beautiful Lana Lang. Lana's parents died during a meteor storm years earlier, but she doesn't realize that Clark crash-landed on Earth during that storm. Likewise, Lex doesn't know that the radiation exposure that rendered him bald resulted from Clark's calamitous arrival. Clark, of course, knows all this and though it wasn't his fault in any way, shape or form, he lives each day feeling guilty.

"I knew about Superman," Kreuk says, during a conversation on a day off from Smallville. "I knew about Clark Kent. I knew about the basics. I'd seen a couple of episodes of Lois & Clark and one of the Superman movies when I was younger. I don't think my character has been explored too much. I'm not sure, but from what I've heard I don't think she has. So I think it's good that I haven't explored it too in-depth. Warner Bros did give me this big textbook, basically, on Superman, from the beginning. I skimmed through that, so I know more than I used to know.