Soap Star Jumps Into ‘Deep End’

Daytime TV fans know Jonathan Jackson as the handsome teenager who plays Luke and Laura’s son, Lucky, on ABC’s popular soap opera “General Hospital.”

Jackson has won two daytime Emmys, as well as two Soap Opera Digest Awards for his work. Jackson’s face has graced the pages of Tiger Beat and he’s the subject of several teen-driven Web sites. Still, despite his popularity on the drama, Jackson is barely known outside of the soap opera world.

But his recognition factor is about to rise thanks to his pivotal role as Michelle Pfeiffer’s troubled son in the drama “The Deep End of the Ocean,” which opens Friday.

And that puts Jackson exactly where he wants to be: on the big screen. “I think movies are definitely the goal for the long run,” he says.

Two months shy of his 17th birthday, Jackson has already graduated from high school but has no plans for college. “Right now I think I kind of want to get the career going on a steady pace before we kind of interrupt it with school any more than it has,” Jackson says matter-of-factly during a recent interview at Columbia TriStar.

“Deep End” director Ulu Grosbard says Jackson has “that gift, that mysterious ‘X’ factor, that enables him to make use of himself in front of the camera and be there in the moment.

“He is a serious kid. A stable kid. I think his craft and his work and his being a good actor is what this is all about for him. It’s not all the hoopla surrounding it.”

Based on Jacquelyn Mitchard’s acclaimed 1996 novel, “Deep End of the Ocean” explores how the disappearance of a child impacts on a family. For nine years, Jackson’s Vincent has been wracked with guilt because he was the one who let go of his younger brother Ben’s hand in the lobby of a crowded hotel lobby.

Moody and withdrawn, Vincent hides his pain behind a mask of rebelliousness. When Ben suddenly returns to their lives, Vincent has a difficult time adjusting and communicating with his sibling.

It was “Deep End” casting director Laura Kennedy who had seen Jackson on “General Hospital” and recommended him to Grosbard. Initially, the director was “‘ill at ease” with the prospect of auditioning a soap star.

“When you have been on a series like that, a soap, for that amount of time, there is a tendency when you do that much work you fall into [bad] habits.”

But Grosbard was so impressed with Jackson’s first audition, the director had him return to read with Pfeiffer. “There was such a chemistry between them that there was no question in my mind that he was my first choice,” he says.

Striking Resemblance

to Michelle Pfeiffer

With his fine features and almost delicate good looks, Jackson also bears an uncanny familial resemblance to Pfeiffer. In fact, Grosbard recalls, Pfeiffer was “shook up” when she first met Jackson. “She felt like she was seeing her own son,” he says.

For his part, Jackson was jazzed about the prospect of working with Pfeiffer. “I had been a huge admirer of Michelle’s work,” Jackson says. “I knew that it was going to be a fun experience.”

Though he has an older brother, who is also an actor, Jackson didn’t “personalize the brother relationship” in the movie. “I am sure natural tendencies came through, but I kind of prepare more around ideas and concepts rather than past personal experiences. My preparation has a lot to do with the big questions of life having to do with guilt, right and wrong, anger, frustration and forgiveness.”

Jackson felt a real connection to Vincent from reading the script and the book. In fact, he says, he borrowed “tons of things from the book that didn’t end up in the movie and kind of implemented them in what I was trying to do in the movie in terms of the character’s point of view and his fears.”

‘General Hospital’

as Training Ground

“GH” wrote him out of the show for a month so Jackson could be free to make the movie. His latest contract stipulates he can be let out of the series any time he gets a feature.

Prior to getting “General Hospital” in 1993, Jackson’s only acting experience had been commercial work.

“With soaps, you get to do so much material with a big variety, so if you really work at it and don’t get lazy, it is the best training in the world,” Jackson says.

“I probably work two to five days of the week on the show with all different scripts every day,” Jackson explains. “So we get an average of probably 20 pages a day to do.”

The last year, Jackson has been able to sink his teeth into Lucky’s juicy story line. “He has a kind of a romantic interest,” Jackson explains. “She was raped earlier in the year, so he is taking care of her and helping her through it. They kind of fell in love through that experience of helping each other through their problems.

“My character also had a lot of problems with his family and left home during the year. They have been kind of in hard places in their life and leaned on each other.”

Even with his busy schedule on “General Hospital,” Jackson still manages to find time to have a rock band called Scarlet Road with his brother, father and uncle.

“I have been playing guitar for six years,” he says. “We’ve played the Whiskey and the Roxy quite a few times and played the Super Soap weekend in Orlando which was pretty neat because they had a lot of people there.”

Jackson doesn’t believe he’s missed any life experiences of a typical teenager due to his work. “I don’t regret any of it,” he says. “I focus on the fact I have been able to do something I really love doing. I have been given an opportunity to do what I love to do and not many people get to do that.”