Angel Turns 25: How David Boreanaz Turned a Chat into a TV Vampire

Oct. 5 marks the 25th anniversary of the day the cult vampire series Angel first aired, and the show's star, David Boreanaz says landing the part was pretty much happenstance — and having a lot in common with the casting director.

"I got cast as the character Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer through [casting director] Marcia Shulman," Boreanaz, now 55, told PEOPLE in August of the series that changed his entire career.

"My first meeting with her was an hour and 30 minutes. We mainly talked about Italian restaurants in New York. Then she was like, 'Well, should we read [for the role]?' "

He added that while he got along swimmingly with Shulman over their shared love of red-sauce restaurants, the producers were also very eager to cast the character who would play Buffy's love interest.

"This was the ninth hour for them," he recalled. "They need this character in four days. I read with them and thought, 'Oh, I this is going to be horrible.' But then it was, 'Oh my God, I got through that,' and then I got through the next phase, and I got the job."

Boreanaz knows that his success on TV comes down to being able to have great first meetings, and then to also pitch ideas and do what he can to make them happen.

"I'm very quick and impulsive," he said. "I literally can be in a room, and I could think of an idea, and I can take that idea, and I can pitch it to them, and we'd all be like, 'Whoa, that's amazing.' It just happens. It's like a flicker."

Throughout his success with Buffy, Angel, Bones and later SEAL Team, he said he made sure not to let success ever get to his head.

"You have to be very self-aware," he shared of becoming a successful actor. "You have to balance, and you can't let the ego get out of control, and you feel like you just got to check yourself every day on that."

But then, once he lands a job, he devotes himself fully to the work:

"I show up, and I show up as whole as I can, and there are days when I show up, and I'm not there, and I fall like everybody else. I'm a human," he added.