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HOLLYWOOD–The line at the autograph table snaked out of the Burbank Marriott ballroom, the longest by far at the recent Hollywood Collectors & Celebrities Show.

They wanted to see Paul Reubens, famous for playing Pee-wee Herman but who has evolved from that juvenile character into a serious – and seriously visible – character actor.

"This is unbelievable," marveled Reubens, whose stint as the host of Pee-wee's Playhouse from 1986 through 1991 was, until recently, generally regarded as the high point of his career.

In the last couple of years, the publicity-shy comedian – whose trajectory dramatically stalled after his 1991 arrest and no-contest plea on charges of indecent exposure – has been steadily attracting fresh regard.

NBC, for example, just signed him to star in Area 57, a sitcom about a passive-aggressive alien being watched over by a bunch of government employees. Bloggers and TV critics are still lavishing praise on his recent bit on 30 Rock as an inbred European monarch with a "joint fluid" disease. A guest appearance on Reno 911! last year led to a role in this year's movie, Reno: 911! Miami. Then there's his recurring character as Courteney Cox's old tabloid mentor on the TV drama Dirt, airing on U.S. cable.

Originally trained, he has said, as "a serious actor, in the James Dean kind of school," he landed in Hollywood as part of a boy-girl act on The Gong Show. He graduated to the L.A.-based improv troupe the Groundlings, in which, among his many other characters, he debuted Pee-wee Herman in 1978. Initially, Reubens has said, Pee-wee was a fumbling stand-up comic with a propensity for botching jokes, but by 1981 Reubens had developed him into a live show that sold out for months in L.A. and went on to play Carnegie Hall.

The Pee-wee stage show, patterned on old kids' cartoon shows, became an HBO special, then a movie (directed by then-unknown Tim Burton) and then a Saturday morning show, then another movie, then a pop-culture phenomenon.

After the cancellation of the show, however, Reubens' career faltered. In 1991, he was caught in a vice sting at an adult theatre in Florida. Reubens paid a fine, did public service announcements, joked about the embarrassing incident and sought to put it behind him. But the morals charge damaged his marketability as a children's entertainer, and Reubens has not appeared in full Pee-wee voice and regalia in 15 years.

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