New Start: After a tricky year, Foley wants to be challenged again.   (Photo: Baldomero Fernandez)

"It has been a bumpy road," says Scott Foley wryly, referring to the unfortunate departure of his co-star Jasmine Guy from Richard Greenberg's The Violet Hour. "But it can only get better!" he adds. Let's hope so, for the play, which opens at the Biltmore on November 6, comes at the end of what has already been a bumpy year for the actor, who endured a media blitz surrounding his split last April from Jennifer Garner, she of ass-kicking Alias fame. But Foley, previously best known as Keri Russell's mensch boyfriend Noel Crane on the WB's Felicity, didn't come to New York to brood. "The play came along at the perfect time," he says of The Violet Hour, in which he plays a Fitzgerald-like novelist. "I wasn't being challenged anymore. How boring is it not to be challenged and terrified?" Given Jasmine's-er, how shall we put it?-erratic performance, he may have had enough challenges for the time being, but he still relishes one of the stage's fringe benefits. Unlike TV-or marriage, for that matter-"no one can take what I do and edit it or get rid of me," he says. Attaboy.

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