CARSON CITY -- The recipe for an international supermodel/heartthrob actor?

Take his Korean-American mother's eyes and skin tone, mix those with his British-American father's height and cheekbones, and you have Daniel Henney -- the current "it" man of Asian modeling and television.

The only child of Phillip and Christine Henney of Carson City, Henney has quickly risen to fame with an international modeling career and starring role as a doctor in love with his cancer patient in the top-rated South Korean television dramatic miniseries, "My Name Is Kim Sam-soon."

Henney was well known locally for his basketball prowess during his years at Carson City-Crystal (CC-C) High School. The school's Winterfest king helped lead the Eagles to a 13-8 record during his senior season of 1997-1998. Henney scored as many as 28 points and had as many as 14 rebounds in a single game.

Coach Jim Warren called his 6-foot-1 point guard "a leader who excels in many facets of the game -- defense, passing, rebounding and scoring."

Now 25, Henney is an established globetrotter, traveling to exotic locales such as Beijing, Hong Kong, Paris, Singapore and Taiwan; hanging out with Gucci designer Tom Ford and models, actors and musicians; posing for Armani, Guess and magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Vogue; and starring in music videos with Korean pop superstars.

Henney's online blog receives tens of thousands of hits every day and he was rated highly in China's recent Asian model poll.

Henney and Academy Award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow recently were chosen as spokesmodels for Bean Pole fashions. The two this week were scheduled to be in London to shoot a commercial that will be telecast in Korea in the fall.

According to a Bean Pole official, Paltrow's elegant and intellectual image combines with Henney's exotic features to provide an excellent representation of Bean Pole's premium Collection Line slated to be launched this fall.

Despite all the attention globally, Henney's parents say he is just a laid-back man who studied business communications and theater at Alma and Albion colleges, which he attended on basketball scholarships. Henney later transferred to the University of Illinois where he received an academic scholarship.

According to Christine Henney, while attending Albion College one of her son's professors told him he should look into modeling. So during Christmas break in 2000, instead of returning to college Henney asked his mother to drive him to a modeling audition in Lansing. There, he was selected as a finalist.

Henney then went to another audition in Chicago where he once again was chosen as a finalist. It was then that he signed a major modeling contract.

The rest is history in the making.

Henney now calls New York home. When friends ask his parents about their son, "I tell them he's an international model," Christine said. "It's a strange feeling."

Later this month, Christine, a registered nurse at Carson City Hospital, will head to South Korea to spend some time with her son, who arranged for her to fly first-class with an airline he modeled for. Phillip, a machine operator in St. Johns, will stay behind.

Henney admits he is a health fanatic and runs about eight miles a day, lifts weights and eats a no-fat, low-carbohydrate diet to stay in shape. Voted "best dressed" by his fellow Carson City-Crystal high school classmates, Henney's fashionable career could be spotted at a young age.

"It was ridiculous," Phillip said. "He'd get up at 7 o'clock in the morning and dress up in these crazy costumes. He loves it."

The Henneys talk with their son almost every week. Although they haven't yet seen an episode of "My Name is Kim Sam-soon," they expect their son will send them DVDs of the drama in the near future. When the show's producers discovered that as a Korean infant Christine had been adopted by an American family, they wrote that fact into the storyline of Henney's character.

Henney didn't speak Korean when he first began the miniseries, but he is rapidly becoming fluent in the language.

"I want to break through," Henney was quoted as saying in the July 4 issue of the Korea Times newspaper. "It's so hard for Asian actors to break through fully, but we are slowly making a way and I think it's time.

"There's a lot of typecasts when you're a model, someone who is supposed to be good-looking or whatever," he said. "People assume you are not going to be able to act and think that you're always going to play the lover and I don't want to do that. I want to play many different roles and prove that I can do it."