NEW YORK — If not for a twist of fate many years ago, Andre Braugher would likely be an engineer right now.

A very intense engineer but an engineer nonetheless.

It didn't happen only due to a chance encounter he had with Shakespeare while as an undergraduate at Stanford University.

The director of a student production of "Hamlet" begged Braugher to fill in for the role of Claudius when the original actor bowed out just before the debut.

Braugher, perhaps best know for his role of a Baltimore police detective in the acclaimed 1990s TV show "Homicide: Life on the Street," had just three days to learn his lines. When he finally hit the stage, he was ready to abandon his old life.

"I had a midlife crisis at 19. I just had to do this," says Braugher, now 45. "I found an emotional immediacy and resonance and joy in being on stage."

Braugher, the product of an all-boys Jesuit high school in Chicago, found there were some added benefits to a life as an actor that engineering couldn't match.

"People clap and they go out and have parties afterward and it's full of vivacious young women," he says, laughing. "Otherwise, it's just you and your slide rule and your T-1 calculator in the library."

His career trajectory forever changed. Braugher became a drama major and later got a master's from The Juilliard School. He then embarked on an Emmy- and Obie-winning career that has led him back this summer to where it all began: As Claudius in "Hamlet."

He co-stars in the Public Theater's free Shakespeare in the Park series, opposite Michael Stuhlbarg in the title role, Sam Waterston of "Law & Order" fame, Lauren Ambrose of "Six Feet Under" and Margaret Colin, currently on TV's "Gossip Girl."

It's Braugher's first time on stage in a dozen years and his sixth Shakespeare in Central Park, following appearances in "King John," "Much Ado About Nothing," "Measure for Measure," "Twelfth Night" and "Henry V," for which he won a 1997 Obie in the title role.

"Shakespeare has always been a great love of mine," he says during an interview on a bench in, appropriately enough, the park's Shakespeare Garden. He is dressed in jeans and an untucked, button-down shirt, his hair going slightly gray.

"It's like that fantasy we always have of going back to meet up with your old lover and it's all still the same," he says. "Well, I've met up with my old lover and it's just as delicious as it always was."