Dominic Purcell has invented the perfect formula for finding a second home—or a first home that’s away from it all. By Mike Zimmerman

1. Seek your one word
When Purcell was looking for his new place, he broke down the location requirement into one word: waves. And since San Clemente has some of the best waves on the West Coast, that’s where he started looking. What’s your one word? Culture? Space? Woods? Restaurants? Boil it down to that and you’ll immediately know where to start your search.

2. Fill your biggest need
Purcell’s new place had to accommodate his four kids. “When I first looked at this condo, I thought it was okay,” he says, “but then I saw that backyard and was, like, ‘This is it.’” Now his kids have not only the beach, but a safe space to play and ride their bikes. What do you need? This will filter out a lot of wasteful searching.

3. Gauge the potential for improvement
Look at any place with an eye to the future. Purcell would eventually like to buy
up his entire four-unit building so he can knock down walls and create something bigger and better.

4. Don’t overthink it
A retreat should be simple. Purcell has his necessities and just enough decor to make his place comfortable. “I really don’t need much,” he says. Do you? Probably not. And simplicity means spending less money, thinking less about impressing visitors, and living with less stress in general.

5 Set your privacy level
The whole point of a retreat is peaceful living. That’s why Purcell loves San Clemente. “People don’t give a crap about me here,” he says. “In Hollywood, if I so much as sit outside on Sunset Boulevard for 5 minutes with a girl or a friend, before you know it I’m in some stupid magazine.” Granted, paparazzi probably aren’t your problem. But you can control just how accessible you will be via phone or BlackBerry or (ugh) people just dropping by.

Dominic Purcell’s Great Escape

The Prison Break star broke out of his self-made prison to create a new life. Learn how to fashion your own

By Mike Zimmerman, Photos by Sam Jones

There’s a long string of surf communities on the California coast between L.A. and San Diego. You’ve probably heard of most of them, all bearing the name “Beach”: Redondo, Long, Newport, Huntington, Laguna. In some fortunate spots along that stretch, dramatic hills rise within sight of the sand, and the houses hanging from them look as if  they were stacked there by a 4-year-old with ­several thousand house-sized Legos. They’re stuffed at random angles within feet of one another, some echoing ­Spanish design, some sporting lots of glass, some featuring nothing special except a jaw-dropping view of the Pacific. San Clemente, farther south than all the above, is like this, but according to Dominic Purcell, it has one thing the others don’t: “World-class waves, man.”

Purcell, 38, is an actor, of course, and also a dad and a dude, but if you had to pick one word to sum up what he is, it would have to be “surfer.” He surfs every day. When he’s working on his show, Prison Break, more than an hour north in Hollywood, he crashes at a friend’s place in Venice and wakes up at 4 in the morning to surf, using the lights from the pier to see the waves. On his days off, he motors down to San Clemente and surfs all day. He gushes about T Street, a collection of reefs and sandbars in the San Clemente surf that produces those giant waves. He uses terms like “gnarly,” “dude,” and “awesome” without fear. Today, a glimmering October day, Purcell pulls up to his place in a pickup truck full of buddies, sandy boards, and dripping wetsuits.

This is the life, you might say. You might also say, This is not my life. But here’s the thing: Purcell has earned this. He’s designed his lifestyle out of necessity, almost urgency, in fact. And he’s found that that’s where the best living comes from—designing an honorable lifestyle and sticking by it. That’s something anyone can and must do, because in the end no one will do it for you. You see, Purcell has been sober for 5 years now. And he really needed to be sober. He’s also recently separated from his wife, and is the father of four beautiful kids. (I can personally attest to their California looks; I saw the photos.) These are all positives, and you’ll see why in a minute.

Purcell racks his board in the garage and lays his wetsuit on the concrete outside his front door to dry. His condo is a 2-minute walk up the hill from the beach. The building has four units—two on top, two below—and Purcell owns both lower condos. In the back, a concrete veranda overlooks a sizable backyard with dirt ramps for his kids’ bike adventures. The property butts up against a park. You can see the ocean from virtually any window. His buddies crash on weekends in the spare unit, and Purcell’s long-term plan is to own the whole building, break out some walls, and create a great space.

But right now, his condo is just about the ideal guy house: simple, easily maintained, all pretenses banished. He hasn’t overfurnished. Big, framed black-and-white photos of his kids lean against the stone fireplace. A Prison Break script sits on the living room sofa. To Purcell, the real valuables are in the garage: a rack of surfboards, a few dirt bikes of varying sizes for his kids, and his battle-scarred green Dodge pickup.

After he shows me around, Purcell and I sit for a while in his living room, and he tells me how in the hell he got here. Emphasis on hell.

Continue to read about Purcell's battle with alcohol...