BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — When actor Fred Savage was 4 years old, he broke his leg and was hospitalized in traction for 2½ weeks. Away from his family and friends most of the time, Fred was profoundly affected by the experience.

“I’m not an analyst, but I know that shaped my whole life,” he says.

Two years later, young Fred was performing, and finding a vocation that would last the rest of his life. That young boy we remember from “The Wonder Years” is all grown up with a wife and three kids, ages 9, 7 and 2. Unlike some, he’s managed to bridge the gap between child actor and adult achiever with little fallout.

And to his surprise, he’s starring in another sitcom, “The Grinder,” premiering on Fox on Tuesday.

He co-stars with Rob Lowe, who plays his older, crazier brother. Here it’s Savage who is the straight man as an earnest attorney tethered to an actor brother who thinks if he plays a lawyer on TV he should be able to pull it off in real life.

It’s obvious from “The Grinder” that Savage hasn’t lost his comic timing. He says his father, who died this year, was always funny.

“When I was a kid my dad would drive me to auditions. We lived outside of Chicago and it was 25 miles to downtown from where we lived so when we drove — my mom used to get so mad at him — we used to listen to comedy albums: Rodney Dangerfield, Billy Crystal, Eddie Murphy and Joan Rivers.

“It was all wildly inappropriate for a kid who was just 7 or 8, 9 years old, but I used to love it.”

He corralled a successful career as a child actor with roles in “The Boy Who Could Fly,” “Dinosaurs,” “The Princess Bride.” Finally armed with a degree in English from Stanford, Savage decided he wanted to direct and produce projects rather than perform for the camera. “After college I was trying to establish myself as a director and there were a couple years in there where it was very slow going,” he admits.

“I directed one episode one year and maybe two the next, and none the next, and then three. It was very slow, very deliberate. But I really took it very seriously, and when I wasn’t working doing a job that would show up on your IMDB page, I was just trying to stay active, trying to stay engaged. I’d call director, producer friends of mine, or even people who weren’t friends of mine, and ask, ‘Can I come hang out on your set? Can I come observe? Can I talk to you about directing?’”

Earlier actor Dan Lauria, who played his dad on “The Wonder Years,” lent him some advice that Savage took to heart. “He told me, ‘Do something every day that reminds you you’re an actor. If you don’t have an acting job, watch a movie, read a play, do something that reminds you you’re an actor.’”

Pausing, he says, “That’s true for anything in the entertainment business because you’re not really doing it unless you have a job, but the time between the jobs you can’t twiddle your thumbs. You remind yourself every day what you want to be doing and why you want to be doing it.”

Savage, 39, was dating his wife, Jennifer, during those lean times. “She was a commercial real estate broker in downtown Los Angeles, so she’d get up every morning in her killer power suit and her leather briefcase and march off to downtown Los Angeles and do really big high-powered, high-profiled, big-dollar deals on these incredible buildings downtown,” he recalls.

“I’d be sitting at home in my underwear playing video games. She’d come home, and I’d be in the same position. The only difference was I’d have these Chinese takeout containers around me that I’d had delivered.

“It was not pleasant,” he chuckles. “We were dating. She didn’t have to stay. She has to stay now. She was like, ‘You have to get your s— together and figure out what you want to be doing.’ She helped also. She’s been with me from the very beginning of my directing career and she’s seen it build from, ‘Get out of the house and go do something’ to ‘You can pass on a job. Stay home. Be with the family.’”