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How happy are we at the return of Jackie Earle Haley? So happy that, when we opened the New York Times recently to find an article titled "Some Good News At Last for a Bad News Bear," we practically squealed with delight. It's true -- actual squealing!

By a strange coincidence, and with no foreknowledge of his imminent return, we'd been discussing this very former child star with a friend who hails from Bloomington, Indiana, the town where Breaking Away is set. He confessed a fascination with Jackie Earle Haley. We confessed a fascination with Jackie Earle Haley. Then the New York Times confessed a fascination with Jackie Earle Haley.

Everything's coming up Haley!

Haley, for those who've not yet remembered his weasel-eyed, sexy little face and enjoyed the subsequent moment of Actual Squealing, was a teen star in the '70s, appearing most notably in The Bad News Bears, Breaking Away and the exquisitely titled Losin' It. Haley was a scrawny teen with scraggly hair and a skeevy glint in his beady little peepers. He specialized in slightly unsavory yet ultimately appealing underdogs and ne'er-do-wells. He played characters named "Moocher" and "Kelly Leak." He rode a dirt bike. He looked like trouble. Then he disappeared.

By "disappeared," we don't mean "vanished" so much as "spent a lean ten years that climaxed in roles in Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence and Prophet of Evil: The Ervil LeBaron Story." Yet there were people, like us, or our Bloomington-bred friend, who remembered Haley. He had personified a certain rough-and-tumble, rat-faced '70s sexiness that found its female counterpart in Tatum O'Neal and, to a lesser extent, Jodie Foster. And guess what, baby?

Jackie Earle Haley is back.

He plays "Sugar Boy," a skeevy aide to Sean Penn's politician in All the King's Men, opening this weekend. Then he'll co-star in Little Children, the new Todd Field film with Jennifer Connelly and Kate Winslet. Jackie Earle Haley, baby!

Haley's bald now, the skeevy locks having long been left somewhere on the road from the '70s to now. But he's still got that intense glare and that rascally glint and, gosh darn it, he's still a little bit sexy. Which is worrisome, since in Little Children he plays a child molester. But never mind! Just that name alone: Jackie. Earle. Haley. It's a good thing he's back as a character actor, because otherwise he'd seemed destined to assassinate the President.

Welcome back, sir. You were missed, but never forgotten.