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Jeffrey Donovan, well-known for his role in “Burn Notice,” has decidedly opted out of returning to Los Angeles.
In a conversation with Fox News Digital, the 57-year-old actor shared insights about his relocation to Colorado, a decision that followed meeting his wife on the set of one of his projects.
“I encountered my future wife while wrapping up a job, and with her being a Colorado native, my visits there became constant,” Donovan revealed. “It’s a remarkable place, and I’m committed to raising my children there indefinitely.”
Donovan and Michelle Woods crossed paths in 2011 and tied the knot a year later in a modest ceremony in Santa Barbara, California, in August 2012.
Since their marriage, the couple has been blessed with three children: Claire, Lucas, and Ethan. Embracing Colorado as their home, Donovan humorously refers to it as the real sunshine state, in contrast to Florida, which he jokingly dubs “the thunderstorm state.”
“Colorado, secretly, is the sunshine state,” he said. “It’s a beautiful part of the country that gets more sunshine than maybe even Arizona and New Mexico. It’s incredible. So that’s why we’re there. And it’s really healthy living.”
The “Sicario” star shared that although he grew up in Boston, many of his friends currently live in Los Angeles and are raising children there.
While he does miss his friends, he says they all agree that raising children is “a challenge,” and that for him, being in Colorado makes it less so.
“I find it less challenging in Colorado, which plays to my talent level of raising kids,” Donovan explained. “If it’s not hard raising kids in Colorado, then that’s where I wanna be.”
The actor first gained national attention with his breakout role in “Burn Notice” in 2007. He played Michael Westen on the show, a blacklisted former CIA operative who works to find out who was behind the burn notice and why, without any of his usual contacts or resources.
He starred on the show for seven seasons and even went on to direct some episodes.
“I feel very fortunate about the show, but I also know that at the time it was the most grueling to this day job I’ve ever had,” he told Build in November 2017. “It was difficult, but I look back at if I didn’t take that job, and I wasn’t there, I would never have met my future wife and had my three beautiful children.”
Donovan is currently starring in the three-part series “The Faithful,” which tells story of the Book of Genesis from the perspective of five women at the center of those stories.
The actor stars on the show as Abraham, one of the most iconic figures in the Bible, telling Fox News Digital he thought taking on the role would be “a big swing.”
“There’s a part in the first hour where I actually talk with God and Minnie [Driver] is playing Sarah and I, to be honest, I was lost,” he recalled. “I felt the enormity, the pressure of how do I convey that I literally am talking to God to an audience that wants to talk to God or has talked to God, or wants to believe there is a God. And so I did feel that pressure.”
He then credited his co-star Driver for getting him in the right mindset, saying “she kind of grabbed me” and told him he was “enough,” with Donovan saying, “It was really powerful for me to feel that connection.”
When it comes to portraying the marriage between Abraham and Sarah, Donovan said he “tried to approach it as realistically as possible,” adding that playing a couple who have been married for that long, reinforced to him “that marriage is complicated.”
“It’s challenging, and if you and your partner, whoever that might be, can come to some sort of agreement that we are in it for the long haul, that our children, if you’re blessed enough to have children, are even more important than you, and you put all your eggs into that basket of going, ‘We are the providers, we are their educators, and they learn humanity from us,’ and if you go from that kind of premise, I think your children and your family will end up all right,” he said.