Dana Delany Looking for Her Own Househubby!

This season’s newest Desperate Housewives cast addition, Dana Delany, famously turned down the role of Bree before the show’s 2004 premiere. But she had a very good reason for jumping at the chance to play new Wisteria Lane-ite Katherine Mayfair when show creator Marc Cherry came knocking on her door with the offer of a second chance at joining the DH cast.

The actress jokes in the new issue of More magazine that she joined the cast because several of the stars who were single when the show started –Eva Longoria, Marcia Cross, Nicollette Sheridan–have met their husbands or fianc s since then. “Marriage has never been a big deal for me,” says 51-year-old China Beach Emmy winner Delany. “But I think I’m ready now. Before, I wanted adventures. I feel like, in some ways, I was smarter than anybody. I got to have all the fun in the world, to experience a lot of and figure out what I really like. I got to evolve. Now I know what makes me happy.”

Her DH character’s storyline also parallels her life, Delany says, because, like Katherine with her younger spouse, Delany has also dated a lot of younger men.

“I’ve been dating younger men since my 20s,” says the actress, whose past loves have included Eagles singer Don Henley, actors Treat Williams and Henry Czerny and China Beach/The West Wing producer John Sacret Young.

Recently, she tells More she dated a wine connoisseur who was 11 years younger and a writer who is 14 younger than her. “I can’t go any younger than that!” she says. “That’s my limit. But younger men are just more fun. I like their energy. I’ve always been kind of young for my age.”

But while things are looking good for Delany in real life, her on-screen love affair is about to hit the rocks. Sunday’s new episode of DH (9 p.m. ET, ABC) finds her husband Adam’s (Nathan Fillion) former stalker coming to town, and Delany herself spilled the beans about the show’s Dec. 2 tornado episode, which, as she told Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa, spells doom for her marriage.

“One of the casualties of the tornado is my marriage. And I saying to Marc Cherry, who created the show, ‘We haven’t even had sex yet!’ And he said to me, ‘Well, that’s up to you.'” –Kimberly Potts

Photo: RON TOM/ABC(2)