When the Day Grows Old : Why Actors Leave Soaps to Find Another World

Virtually every soap opera publication regularly reports on actors who leave their shows to try their performing luck elsewhere. But what happens to them? What is life after daytime really like?

“Everyone and their mother told me not to leave ‘General Hospital,’ because the show was so hot. They said, ‘You’re making the biggest mistake of your life,’ ” recalls John Stamos, who portrayed Blackie Parrish on that ABC soap from 1981 to ’83 and now stars on the same network’s “Full House.” “But I was played out.”

Despite having a development deal with CBS, Stamos encountered some surprises. “It was strange--you’re so popular on the show, you can’t go down the street without people following you. Then you get out there and it’s ‘Who?’ The producers and other people hiring (in prime time) don’t watch daytime. I burst out thinking that all I did was going to be successful, and I learned damn fast”--with two quickly failed series, “Dreams” and “You Again?”--”that it’s not.”

Fellow “GH” alumnus Sam Behrens, who played Jake Meyer from 1984 to ’89 after a one-year stint as Dr. Adam Cohen on “Ryan’s Hope,” had no such expectations. “I think,” he says, “that’s part of the reason that I’ve been able to do other things,” among them a role on CBS’ “Knots Landing” and the currently filming Touchstone feature “Alive.” “Daytime has a lot of trappings, but (upon leaving) it’s like you’re starting over again. If you can remember what that was like and stick to it, you have a better shot.”

For Judith Light, who won back-to-back Daytime Emmy Awards for her 1977-82 role as Karen Wolek on ABC’s “One Life to Live,” venturing into prime time required somewhat of an attitude adjustment. Light, who is now preparing a new CBS sitcom, “Letting Go,” after eight years on “Who’s the Boss?,” says that after doing one television film role and one episodic guest shot post-”OLTL,” she did not work for eight months.

“I knew I was coming into the room for my auditions with some attitude. I said to my managers, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ They said, ‘We think you’re scared and you’re covering it over with anger, and people are picking up on it.’ When I came in to audition for ‘Who’s the Boss?’ I was in a different place. I loved it and was excited about it, and I told them so.”

No such problems awaited David Hasselhoff. The day he left his 1975-82 role as Snapper Foster on CBS’ “The Young and the Restless,” he learned that his proposed prime-time series “Knight Rider” had been picked up. That show and his subsequent “Baywatch,” which he now owns and produces for syndication after an NBC run, have afforded him international stardom.

Ironically, Hasselhoff left “Y&R;” in part because he grew weary of the evenings spent memorizing as many as 50 pages of dialogue per script--only to discover that the “Knight Rider” shooting schedule was demanding in its own right. “I was getting up at 5:30 a.m. and getting home at 7:30 or 8:00 at night. I thought, ‘I have no more homework, but I have no home life,’ ” he recounts. “It affected my first relationship (with first wife Catherine Hickland).”

Hasselhoff says that his daytime emoting was more mentally fulfilling than his primarily physical prime-time work. That opinion is seconded by Richard Hatch, who played Philip Brent on ABC’s “All My Children” from 1969 to ’72 before co-starring in “The Streets of San Francisco” and “Battlestar: Galactica.”

“Soaps give actors an opportunity to do their best acting around,” he says. “Most prime-time stuff never lives up to that, the development of a full-blown character who lives and breathes and gives you a chance to explore so much of yourself. I’ve been frustrated ever since I left the soaps, though I was frustrated then because I always wanted to do more, go deeper. Here and there (in non-soap projects), you’ll get a scene where you play a human being, but for the most part you get action-oriented situations.”

Hatch did return to daytime in December, 1989, for a two-month stint on NBC’s “Santa Barbara,” and says he would return again. Some of his colleagues also say that they would go back, given the proper circumstances and salary, though others consider their soap experience an invaluable training ground but a closed career chapter.

Indeed, in recent months a number of well-known former soap stars, such as Anthony Geary of “General Hospital” and Wayne Northrop of NBC’s “Days of Our Lives,” have returned to the medium in which they gained their fame. Some of the more ballyhooed, including Deidre Hall of “Days” and Emma Samms of “GH,” were lured back in part by contractual promises of prime-time outings and, in Hall’s case, a daytime spinoff.

In a January interview, Samms told TV Times that her primary reason for again portraying Holly Sutton Scorpio was her fondness for the “GH” cast and crew. The desire to work again in that sort of close, friendly atmosphere was also a strong incentive for the daytime return of Thaao Penghlis, who played Victor Cassadine on “GH” in 1981 and Count Anthony DiMera on “Days” from 1981 to ‘85, before co-starring in the revived “Mission: Impossible” series and several miniseries. Penghlis began portraying the mysterious Marcus Disgrazia on “Santa Barbara” last month.

“ ‘Santa Barbara’ approached me. I hadn’t worked in Los Angeles in six years,” he says. “(Former ‘Days’ castmate) Leann Hunley and I still see each other, and I said to her, ‘I miss those days, where you can go and be a family.’ I didn’t take the second male lead I was offered in Sidney Sheldon’s miniseries ‘The Sands of Time’ because it would be shooting in Yugoslavia and the war broke out there. So I thought, ‘I’ll work with people who can create an ensemble, like there was on ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘Days.’ ”

Penghlis, who did not sign a contract and can leave the soap whenever he may wish, sees no comedown in coming back to daytime. “A lot of actors are out of work, so I feel blessed. Part of the survival game is to plant seeds in every aspect of the business. You keep the creative juices working, because if you don’t, they become blocked.”

Kim Zimmer, who also joined the cast of “SB” this year, as police officer Jodie Walker, after a 1983-90 run on CBS’ “Guiding Light,” agrees: “I absolutely have no problem going to daytime. I’m an actor and I want to act. It shouldn’t make any difference what I’m doing. These classes that have been set up are bull.”

Though Zimmer won three Daytime Emmys as Reva Shane on “GL,” during which time a prime-time episode of CBS’ “Designing Women” was written with her in mind, she was unprepared for her reception in Hollywood upon forsaking daytime.

“I didn’t expect to be handed jobs on a silver platter, but I expected more than what I got,” she says, citing a three-episode run on “MacGyver” and two television films. “I had a very positive attitude when I came out here, and the city humbled me. Plus, I couldn’t have picked a worse time to come out. The first year, not as many pilots were made because of the economy, and the second year, with less movies being made, feature (actresses) were dying to do prime-time television.”

In a coincidental soap swap, former “SB” actor Vincent Irizarry--who starred in the NBC miniseries “Lucky/Chances,” did episodic guest shots and appeared in the Clint Eastwood feature “Heartbreak Ridge”--last year joined the cast of “GL” as Nick McHenry. Or rather, rejoined: He had played a different character, the now deceased Lujak, on that show from 1983 to ’85.

Like his colleagues, Irizarry is happy to be an employed actor again. “‘Lucky/Chances’ did really well for me, brought a lot of attention my way. Universal and CBS were looking for projects for me,” he says. “The problem was, I’m 32 but look younger, so I was in the middle of two ages. Someone would say, ‘He’s a little too young or too old.’ What’s the point--I may as well have a steady job for a few years, hopefully mature and then go out and do it again.”

Whatever each actor’s individual experiences are, life after daytime is far more viable today than in past years, observes Hatch. “When I was on ‘All My Children,’ you got on soaps and stayed on soaps. Very few actors left daytime, and they had to be aggressive about it. Today, you can be million-dollar babies on soaps. You can get out to do television movies, which no one ever expected to do back then. Soaps are a launching pad now for so many.

“And,” he adds, “soaps don’t forget you. Many times, actors are invited back on soaps. So if there is not life after soaps, you can have life back on the soaps.”