PASADENA, Calif. — Actor Thomas Jane knows what it’s like to be unemployed and desperate the way his character is in HBO’s comedy “Hung.” Though he was homeless, living on food stamps and sleeping on park benches, Jane never had to resort to capitalizing on his personal endowments the way his character does.

“There were a couple times I wanted to quit, but fortunately I didn’t have anything else I could do,” he says, slouching on the leather couch in a hotel here.

“So the thought of quitting would come when I couldn’t find any purchase in the barren soul of the artist, and I carried on.”

Jane, who’d quit school at 16 to study drama, started doing commercials when he hit L. A. “A friend of mine’s dad shot commercials so he got me my SAG [Screen Actors Guild] card, got me in the union at the age of 24. I finally got into the union and continued to work from the age of 24 on, doing film work at 26-27 and did ‘Boogie Nights’ when I was 27 and got a career.

“I’ve been very fortunate,” says, Jane who’s wearing worn southern India, where I lived for the next five months,” he says, avoiding eye contact.

That proved a profound experience for Jane, 40. “India opened up my eyes to the world in a way no other experience could have. It’s the opposite of the Western world. Their values are put less on the material things and more on the spiritual things of life, and being in India gave me a perspective that material things are not the end-all, be-all of what life is about,” he says.

Back from India, Jane sold his car to pay for acting school in San Francisco. When he arrived in L. A., he was living in welfare hotels and beginning what he calls “the long slow climb up the Hollywood ladder.”

He clutched at a few odd jobs. “Making that transition was really hard and that’s where I saw most of my peers fail because they would rather be eating. Literally it came down to putting food on the table and having a table to put food on and not working in the business. So people became waiters and eventually the auditions got fewer and fewer.”

He worked as a waiter, a janitor, a bus boy. “I was no good at serving the public so I kept getting fired.”

Finally a role in “Boogie Nights” netted some attention. But Jane was still frustrated. “The films I was in were failing to be of much quality although they were good — they weren’t bad — they weren’t great. And my desire was to be in some really terrific material, something that lasted. ‘Boogie Nights’ lasted. A few other things have done well over the years, but I’m always searching for a movie that will be No 1, but I’ve always found that illusive.”

Jane is married to actress Patricia Arquette and though she filed for divorce in January, she dropped it in July and Jane says, “We’re making a go of it.”

They have a 6-year old daughter together. Becoming a parent “gave me the second half of my life,” says Jane, crossing his arms.