Longboat Key real estate broker Tom Aposporos's professional career is the stuff of high drama: He started out as a child actor, went into real estate after college, then into government and into corporate life as the chairman of a bank holding company, then after seeing his stock in that company rise more than 2,200 percent, suddenly found himself with the time to take up his acting career again.

A child actor who had roles on regional television in his native Dutchess County, N.Y., Aposporos went on to stage work and modeling. After college, "I was 21 years old, had my Actors Equity card, and was dead-on leading man material. That meant I was up against 20,000 people in whatever role I wanted to play," he says. "I decided life might be much more stable for me if I pursued a career in business."

So Aposporos went into his father's commercial real estate business in Poughkeepsie. At 27, he became the youngest person to be elected mayor of that Hudson River town, an office he held for four consecutive unopposed terms. When he retired in 1988 at the age of 35, he joined the board and subsequently became chairman of Progressive Bank, Inc., a publicly traded bank holding company whose stock rose from under $3 to $70 a share under his leadership.

He promptly moved his family to Anna Maria Island in 1997 and opened a branch of his father's real estate company, Aposporos & Son, on Longboat Key. "I considered myself the luckiest person in the world," he says. When he got here, he had the time to pursue voice-over work, film documentary narration and work in corporate commercials and programs.

Now Aposporos is in the cast of the Manatee Players production of Metamorphoses, which swept the Florida and Southeastern Theater Conference awards last fall and winter (he earned Best Acting award at the state competition). He and the cast go on to the American Association of Community Theatres contest in Michigan in June.

"I love being an actor, I love the way it challenges us mentally and physically," he says. "As I get older, I realize all those disciplines are really good for you."