Why do people make fun of soap opera actors and say they're not real actors?

Daytime soaps are often slagged off as places where no talent or maybe actors whose talents lie elsewhere (as in the sack) find work. Truth is far from that fiction or at least maybe complicated.

Many young actors or those starting out in business get or have gotten their first acting jobs on soap operas and went on to better or great things.

That being said, yes; soap actors are certainly treated as second class by Hollywood or others in general for a host of reasons.

From an old NYT article:

"'In the early days, there was nothing but cynicism among the acting community about soap operas,' Mr. Scardino said. 'In the theatrical community, it was declasse. It was a bread-and-butter job, the writing wasn't too good, it really wasn't acting, quite.'

It probably doesn't help that many consider soap opera plots cheesy.

Best send off on soap operas was a Carol Burnett show skit called "As the Stomach Turns".

I give soap actors a lot of credit, these days they only get one or two takes and very little rehearsal.

Antonio Sabato, Jr. got his start in soaps. However that is a pretty good example of looks triumphing over acting (what there is of it) talent. He never became more than a "B" or maybe even "C" actor far as Hollywood is concerned.

Forgot link...

As someone who has watched soaps from time to time, the actors (well most of them anyway) are 1000 times more talented and harder working than the absolute hacks that write their stories and dialogue...they deserve much more derision than the actors.

[Quote] Somebody on the Daily Mail said that the "Home and Away" cast should be ashamed to call themselves actors because their not Hollywood-tier, and that the show is basically Love Island with a bit of mystery and crime.

LMAO 🤣

I was looking at the list @ R1, and a number of actors other than the two mentioned (Lori Loughlin, Marcia Cross) were also on The Edge of Night (the one soap I watched, back in my college days).

They included Kate Capshaw, Željko Ivanek, Bebe Neuwirth and Frances Fisher, plus Julianne Moore (who's mentioned as being in As the World Turns) but was also on Edge.

And Dixie Carter, James Coco, Barry Newman, Tony Roberts, Nancy Merchand and John Travolta were on before I began watching the show.

Personally, I think soap opera trashing is rooted in misogyny. Soap Operas were created as quick, cheap, easy, and disposable programming for housewives. So it had no value other than to sell laundry detergent. Soap Opera writing may not be as polished as other forms due to time and budget, but it is still a creative work that has value.

As for acting, an actor is an actor is an actor. Good acting, bad acting, it's all subjective. The only difference between actors is who got what breaks and who got chosen by which agency to represent them. Yes, you have to bring something to the table but I think a lot of what is considered good acting is really good directing, good rehearsal, time, and editing - all things that soap operas just don't have in great supply.

I also think there was this "stigma" that soap opera actors both men and women were hired FIRST for their looks and bodies, and acting experience, education and talent was considered second if at all..

I think it's changing now with more diversity, more story on real life and not sex, (compare the remaining soap operas today and those back in the 1980's and 1990's where sex scenes were shown regularly, guys paraded around in bikini's/speedos, women as well and so on...

Nowadays alot of average looking outnumber the great looking actors on the soaps....Paul Telfer (xander) on Days of our lives, is the exception not the rule. Then again, he has it all, looks, body and actual acting talent...

R11 how does "creating shows to entertain women and sell them products" equate to misogyny? That's like calling action shows/movies misandry. When you over use a word it becomes meaningless.

And NO. Good acting is not "subjective"

"I think it's changing now with more diversity, more story on real life and not sex, (compare the remaining soap operas today and those back in the 1980's and 1990's where sex scenes were shown regularly, guys paraded around in bikini's/speedos, women as well and so on..."

Soaps are 10000 times worse now than in the 80s/90s. I have seen better writting from a 13 year old's fanfiction on wattpad than I have on present day soaps.

Good lord, the fraus have taken over this site.

I think what causes some criticism is how some actors stay in soaps and never extend themselves elsewhere. Or maybe they try and make one movie which bombs.

I knew an older actress who had a gig on a soap for about a decade. To her it was a money job. Otherwise she worked for free in in the theatre.

I think misogyny is a bit of stretch. I think it is still about snobbery over the writing, which is awful, period (Marland and a handful of exceptions.) Still it was melodrama with the pedal to the metal. It is one of the few fair snobberies in my view. And the production values in the beginning were to be looked down upon because they were really cheap. By the time the networks were spending money on the soaps they were really beefcake and bullshit anyway.

That said, there are many entirely competent actors on soaps - I'd argue the majority. There was a woman on Y&R called Gina Tognoni or something like that and her failure to find something beyond soaps is a mystery to me. Great wells of talent to draw on.

And of course there are the Julianne Moores, Brad Pitts (as noted), but they are exceptions and they got out.

^ Although in fairness, the writing isn't all that much worse than what was prime time when the networks had a future. But there was snobbery over the factory production line of it all, with soaps cranking it out five days a week. The problem is, it looked cranked out in one way or another.

I’ve seen much better acting on soaps than many prime times dramas. People just shit on the acting because the of the incredulousness of the scripts.

[quote]I think misogyny is a bit of stretch.

I don't. We have a long history of devaluing things seen as 'for women' or done by women or geared towards women. There is a long pattern of this type of treatment. Since this is a gay board, let's extend it to our own community. You don't think homosexuality has ties to misogyny? Look at the way bottoms are dismissed as being catty and weak and girly. Look at the way femme gays are trashed.

Romance novels, those bodice rippers, those Jackie Collins type books are geared towards women and all seen as lesser than. So, yes, there is a throughline here about why soaps are treated so poorly.

I stand by my statement.

Gina Tognoni is great. Remind me, did she quit YR or was she fired?

She was fired, ostensibly to make way for Stafford to return.

Congratulations, R21. I continue to disagree. Shall we call it a day?

R23 I love both actresses, but that's pretty shitty. I'm surprised they fired her because she seemed to be a succesfull recast of Phyllis.

I thought it was the feminists that disproved bodice rippers, not misogynists.

Is Julianne Moore the most famous soap alum?

[quote]Romance novels, those bodice rippers, those Jackie Collins type books are geared towards women and all seen as lesser than.

Well, they are lesser than. They may have commercial value but it's not to say they have artistic merit. You think Jackie Collins was robbed of the Nobel Prize in literature? Should Hallowe'en have won best picture? Chef Boyardee made a hell of a lot of money for Safeway but you'd never mistake it for Escoffier. There is a spectrum in creativity. It is not all equal.

R11 has a point. Soap operas or plots with family issues and/or emotional intensity are often dismissed as feminine or disrespected.

Meanwhile we have film after film after film about comic book heroes - comic books being a bit of cheaply done content that shares some of the DNA as the early radio soaps - and yet because it's perceived to be manly and masculine, these films and characters are taken with the most up-one's-own-ass seriousness and billions upon billions have been invested so stories can be told about the fantasies of men to fly around, have huge muscles and cocks and save humanity.

As far as the acting - there were and are a lot of talented people on soaps. Some are terrible, yes, but so many were very good. It's a style of acting that doesn't always make sense out of context, though. And these days the actors are too mumbly and almost too on the naturalistic side of things - so as not to have any personality at all.

R27 She's up there, for sure. Meg Ryan would be another.

R29....people continuously shit on mindless action movies, Michael Bay and the sort, and comic book films are being made far more inclusively and with a much more feminine view point than the comic books they came from. Big difference.

R30 That may be, and I understand the financial picture (that comic book movies often make money AND do so in almost every market around the globe).

But still, I feel there's still misogyny about women's stories and soaps.

[quote] Remind me, did she quit YR or was she fired?

I thought she was let go earlier than she'd planned - but was slated to leave later that year.

Gina's great. I loved her on Guiding Light.

Why was Gina hired to play Phyllis? Did someone get sick of Stafford?

Phyllis was off camera in a coma when they decided to bring her back as GT - who actually played the part like she was a real person, not a Tourette's with a game console.

R8, I briefly wrote for soaps. I don’t disagree w you about results, but you’re wrong about process. Soap writers have no power in the end result of what you see. Plot lines and scene breakdowns are done by a different team. You can write a strong, beautifully crafted script and have it ripped to shreds because of production priorities. The buck stops w the head writer & executive producer. And even they aren’t the ultimate deciders. They’re accountable to someone from the network that most likely doesn’t even watch the show.

R31 I understand perfectly well what you are saying and I agree. I’m male btw. Just look at what we do on here, the running gags. Meryl and G are the two most critically lauded actresses of their generation and we constantly make parody of them. We don’t make fun of Daniel Day or Lawrence Fishburne in the same regard. There is some type of double standard.

I covered soaps (press) and have met and talked to enough writers to confirm what R35 is saying.

Especially post 1995 or so, where network interference and notes can just shred a decent script or story down to nothing.

Or take the story in a direction no one wants it to go. (One of the most notable examples being Maureen Bauer's death on GL, a story pushed by the network or sponsor on the writers and EP based on a supposed result of a focus group.)

If they dont watch the show, what do they care? How would the network benefit from a shitty script? Story, I might get they might want to influence, though they seem to prefer terrible stories over good, but script? And yes, my contempt was meant mostly for the head writer/EP (sometimes they're even the same person) and I refuse to let them of the hook because occasionally the network might interfere.

Most are what people will be considered real actors. What many do on a daily basis is challenging acting.

[quote] And yes, my contempt was meant mostly for the head writer/EP (sometimes they're even the same person) and I refuse to let them of the hook because occasionally the network might interfere.

How special for you.

I watched 'The Hunger Games' to see Leven Rambin (Lily, AMC), not Jennifer Lawrence. And in keeping with this thread, none of her IMDb pictures are from 'All My Children,' so I included one from 'Wizards of Waverly Place.'

Fat Angelica McDaniel was well known to not watch Y&R or B&B and she was head of CBS daytime. She cared about their game shows and that God Awful The Talk. She couldn’t have cared less about the soaps.

R38, they care because of budgets and market research. They aren’t in it for the art.

a soap star is to an actor as a lounge singer is to a pop star

What R43 said.

There was a golden period in the 70s where shows got bigger budgets and intervention from networks was somewhat minimal (unless we're talking about the P&G soaps, which were a whole different kettle of fish). But even with those shows, the head writer was trusted somewhat to tell the story on their own. Doug Marland had minimal interference even into the 90s.

But when the whole Luke and Laura thing happened a certain level of intervention happened - basically to try to "update" shows, make them more youthful and hip, and get a slice of the Luke and Laura pie.

Then in the 90s, as ratings fell - that's when the real bean counting happened, when every aspect of every story went under close examination.

A friend of mine in the industry said that for the last several years, the shows no longer write for characters, they write for the sets. Literally. The sets are in many cases the key part of the story they can tell. It's so expensive to store them and it's too expensive to leave them up.

In the old days if they had a day on Y&R at a restaurant or a day on ATWT at Memorial it was a way to nudge story forward, make people interact or relay a plot point. Now, if they do that? It's because we have this set on a Thursday and we need to have a scene with Melody and/or Peter and/or Eric and [pick any two random actors/actresses] and so that's why these three or four otherwise unconnected characters are meeting in that dire looking coffee house again.

I think it takes more skill to be a soap star than a film star. Film stars get a little more rehearsal, more takes, and more time. Soap stars sometimes have less than a day to figure out what they're going to do and only a few takes to get it right. It's disposable entertainment, but it does take a certain kind of talent to pull it off. A lot of film actors aren't great with memorization. It's also why so many of them fail when they try to do stage. You don't get a second take.

It seems like a great place to train as an actor. The best way to learn as an actor is to perform over and over again and there's no better place to start than a soap.

r46 soap stars on their way to becoming commercial spokespersons, real estate agents and corporate video trainers. Can you say Depends?

With the soap industry all but dead, SO many of them have become real estate agents.

A lot of NYC soaps had broadway actors who took daytime jobs to pay the bills and allowed them to audition. Back in the early days of TV, a movie actor would not be caught dead doing "television." That all changed. When Joan Crawford's daughter got a role in The Secret Storm, Joan offered to fill in for her when she was ill, despite her being some 30 years older than the character. Sopas were often seen as a proving ground for young talent, but that offended long-time Soap Actors who looked at their roles as a job. Before cable. Soaps were pulling in ratings that were on par with what Major network shows pull today. They consistently pulled higher ratings than any late-night talk show yet were still ridiculed.

R49 The new TV landscape is so different.

Not to slag comic book movies again, but the popularity of those movies (and shifts in the financial landscape for movies) means that a lot of the kinds of stories that were told in film 20 to 40 years ago are now on cable/streaming TV. And some TV actors have been nudged into soaps. I mean Gregory fucking Harrison is on General Hospital now.

R27 yes. I can't think of many others. Please leave me out of this silly conversation.

One soap - ATWT - from one era (roughly 1982-1986) had a casting agent named Betty Rea who found great actors. Two of them - Julianne and Marisa Tomei - won Oscars, and a third - Meg Ryan - was the most popular actress in film for a time.

I think Julianne, Marisa and Meg are among the most successful. And all three were in roles where they were on the show for several years. There's a long list of former soap actors who also made it into film or TV, among them - yes, Robin Wright - as well as Kevin Bacon, Ted Danson, Susan Sarandon, John Stamos, Nia Long, Matt Bomer and Sarah Michelle Gellar, to name a few. Some were on their shows for a long time, some were on for a few months as their first jobs in front of a camera.

R38 they haven't done market research for AGES on soaps. And how does paying some suit to go over dialogue...not talking about story, but dialogue...not more expensive than not doing so?

Soap actors are better looking.

Robin Wight doesn't claim soaps

[quote]Robin Wight doesn't claim soaps

She can't claim an Oscar either

r54 correct, but few can act.

R34: I've seen Y&R since the mid-80's and liked both Michelle Stafford and Gina Tognoni as Phyllis. Though both actresses play the character, differently. Sometime in the late 90's , Sandra Nelson played Phyllis, completely different than the the two actreses.

The Stafford spit in that nice Victoria Rowell’s face.

meow

It's an acting job! The acting profession has a 90% unemployment rate. Those people who "look down" on soap opera performers, are unemployed, frustrated actors.

R61 Totally agree.

"Back in the early days of TV, a movie actor would not be caught dead doing "television."

Don't know how far "back in day" you want to go; but by 1960's many veteran actors of film and stage were doing television. True perhaps few to nil "A" level actors/actresses, but Gladys Cooper, Joan Fontaine and others certainly did appear on television.

Just scanning down list of Twilight Zone shows many actors who were in films.

Will give you demise of studio system meant many actors were now on their own and many took what roles they could get to put meat on the table. But others were also equally keen to work in the new medium that was shaking things up.

Landing on a soap opera then and now is excellent training for a young actor (am speaking both in terms of age and stage of career).

You have to show up on time, ready willing and able. Knowing your lines and hitting your marks. The latter two often with just a day or so of rehearsal/read through.

I think it's mostly the awful stereotypical writing and characters. There are some great actors in soap operas. They may also think that it's a steady job with a steady income. Something you don't get in the movie industry. For every Meryl Streep there a hundreds and hundreds of D list actresses and actors who struggle to get any job.

As far as a "working actor" goes, Soaps are great jobs. You either tape early or late, rarely all day. In West Coast Soaps you get your own dressing room, can usually bring your kids and nanny/help, get glammed up, do your job, and be home by 2, unless it is a late shoot. The pay is good, you get a level of fame, and depending on the show ( like B&B) that fame can be global. I know Ronn Moss, Katherine Kelly Lang, and Joanna Johnson were huge stars in Greece and Italy because New World packaged the show for global distribution. In Itlay, they had magazines dedicated to the show. Armani and Valentino were fans and would invite the stars to wear their gowns. Not bad jobs if you can land them.

No one was paying Antonio Sabato, Jr. for his acting skills on General Hospital. Suits wanted attractive to hot men that got their majority female viewers hot and bothered.

R67 Perhaps that's why he became a Trump loving asshole?

I remember Talk Soup had a thing for making fun of Bold and Beautiful, especially Ronn Moss, who truly was a terrible actor.

r69 "RIIIIIIICCCKKK" they played that over and over when he accidently pushed his little brother over a bridge in a fight. RIIIIIICCCCKKK.

Why? Because they're stupid. There's no better training for an actor than working on a soap.

Because they have to ace about just 2 lines of dialogue into the can for a single installment's scene that is part of a full sentence that won't run to completion until 4 weeks' worth of episodes later.

One Life To Live was one of Mother's stories. Only reason one watched was to gaze at Jameson Parker.

🎭 They ARE real actors.

They're just not very good at the acting part.

Youngish Charles Kimbrough also did it for me.

Young Bryan Cranston on OLTL

Demi Moore also did OLTL

Film stars didn't do soaps or television? Tell that to Elizabeth Taylor

Rick Springfield as "Dr. Noah Drake" on General Hospital.

Ummm, ummm!

More Liz Taylor on GH

R76 it's weird seeing Bryan with a full head of hair 😄 He looks great though.

R12 some soap fans see RSW as the opposite of what you said about Paul Telfer.That he was only hired for his looks and doesn't have much acting abilities.

By the by, why did Liz Taylor do General Hospital? Surely she wasn't hard up for money.

I love soaps. Back in the day they really had great writing and acting. Yes, there were cheesy storylines but there were some fantastic stories, and they still hold up. Brooke learning that her child has died on AMC. Nina shooting David on Y&R. Billy comes out on OLTL. The serial killer on Loving. Back then the stories seemed to have a beginning, middle and end and presumably less interference as described above.

It did seem like after the OJ trial, soaps did change.

I love that Sarah Michelle Gellar and Julianne Moore came back to their respective soaps to pay tribute to them as their shows were concluding their runs.

R33 Kind of moot, because when Gina was hired, Stafford was already under contract at General Hospital. .. However, it's somewhat doubtful that then-executive producer, Jill Farren Phelps would have wanted Stafford back, because it had been rumored that she was one of the actors that Phelps had some kind of issue with, which may have led to Stafford deciding to exit in 2013. The one story I heard was that Phelps had grown just as weary as viewers of Stafford's rather loud and bombastic line delivery, which often included the endless three-peating of lines and her addition of unnecessary words in her dialogue like "absolutely" and "definitely." She'd really gotten lazy.

R69 R70 Here 'ya go. It's fun to revisit this gem every now and again.

I miss Gina. Staff's return has been a bust. The writing on Y&R is terrible but La Staff hasn't had one good story since she returned.

The difference between Gina and Staff is that Gina approaches a scene as an actor. Staff approaches it like an axe. No subtlety or nuance.

And she makes me root for Diane.

[quote] "Is Julianne Moore the most famous soap alum?"

No, R27.

Dame Liz is dead, but I'm still here!

Michael Sutton is around and still HAF.

R82... Telfer has starred in a tv movie (hercules), has done nighttime shows (NCIS for one example), has been in films, etc..

In fact, like shawn christian before him and his extensive resume, I think Telfer was always "too good" to be in a soap opera.

Telfer can do drama and comedy as well as any viewer of his work could tell you...

Bryan Cranston 1985 teen mag photos.

Yeah, many of you would hit that.

[quote]I think Telfer was always "too good" to be in a soap opera.

Telfer is not "too good" to eat or have a roof over his head. Plus Paul Telfer totally embraces his soap work and has fun with it. The only people who are still trashing soap work are the same people who still think that there is a difference between film and TV work. Spoiler alert: there isn't.

R93... All I am saying is that Telfer has the talent to be in films and tv projects, not just a soap opera and right or wrong soap operas are still seen as the bottom of the rung, right or wrong it just is...

As long as Telfer is happy then great for him...

I've often wondered about Paul and his wife... she is a Broadway actress who often tours so they are not together often

One of the issues with soap acting is if you're not a fan/regular viewer, it seems weird out of context.

This is a very well done scene from my favorite show, and part of its appeal is that I think even a casual viewer can understand what's happening.

Whereas this scene, from another favorite show of mine, was a culmination of 2 years of storytelling, and while a casual viewer might get the basics of it, they really wouldn't experience the same impact that someone who watched the previous "chapters" or scenes would experience.

I think the Hallmark channel films are replacing what's left of the US market soap operas. Great training ground for new talent.

Most of them are terrible actors with a few notable exceptions. Don’t a lot of these people come from modeling agencies?

R99 Nowadays, yes. It wasn't always like that.

But I agree that most of the soap actors of the last 20 years suck eggs. The younger they are, the harder they suck.

r88 Brad Pitt would probably be the most famous.

People make fun of soap opera acting because ridiculing and parodying melodrama is one of the easiest forms of comedy there is.

Twofer just comes off ass the stereotypical dumb jock with oversized muscles. His scripts just continue to feed into that image. If there us a "good actor" hiding inside, I've yet to see it.

Technically yes, Liz Taylor and Brad Pitt count.

But Brad was on a show for one day and Liz for four days.

In terms of people who had a long term contract and were known for soap roles before their film/tv roles, I'd still say Julianne. Meg and Marisa are at the top of that list.

You could also include Michael B. Jordan (who wasn't on AMC forever, but did have a role there for about a year or so).

The last two daytime stories that closest appeared to be written and acts like a prime-time show were Marty's gang rape and a heart transplant story on General Hospital. There were points in each story that it felt like a prime time show.

There was a point in the 90s where shows were definitely blurring the lines between daytime and nighttime. The AIDS quilt on OLTL and Billy Douglas coming out would be on that list. So would Robin and Stone and AIDS.

😏 I don't see Sara Horton making the headlines anytime soon, unless she robs a bank or blows up a toy store.

The gang rape story on OLTL was quite dark and the rise of the actor who played such a menacing dark character made the show seem a little more prime time than the average soap.

This must be an American thing.

In Britain, many (though not all) soap actors have at least rudimentary stage training, and existing screen credits. They also tend in most cases to be character actor types, or at least archetypes, rather than models and clotheshorses or camp dolls.

Leo DiCaprio was on SB for five episodes, Morgan Freeman was on Another World, Demi Moore was on GH, Chris Helmsworth started on the Australian soap Home and Away, Margo Robbie started on the Australian soap Neighbors, Allison Janney started on Guiding Light, Jane Krakowski on Search for Tomorrow.

I don't know her name but the girl that played Marty could cry on clue and emote daily. Always wondered why she was never heard from again.

cue*

R110 Yes, Alison Janney also won an Oscar.

Unfairly, some might say.

The overreacting causes some unintentional comedy. Reminds me of Barbara Stanwyck.

Soaps had endlessly re-used plots: murders/trials, amnesia, weddings, adulterous affairs, evil twins, alien abduction, etc. Not a lot of rehearsal. Good training in the sense of having to arrive prepared and able to hit your marks, etc.---a bit like B-movies. Like early primetime, it wound up with B-movie types, but instead of Lucy, Donna Reed, Ronald Reagan, Eve Arden and soforth, you got Constance Ford or Macdonald Carey.

Acting, in itself, isn't a real job. Deep down most actors know this, which is why so many of them have emotional problems. The only stable ones are those who act and have actual jobs on the side.

It's a hobby, not a career.

This was as good as primetime at the time.

Glancing at newly returned to Salem, Ciara, I'd say with her bigger and better boobs, she's got a great career ahead of her in Porn.

R103.. you obviously have not seen much of Telfer's work on Days. he can play jerk, sociopath, as well as hilarious funny and melancholy...

oversize muscles? 1) like that is a bad thing? and 2) oversize???

Telfer is certainly a much better actor than Smirky Massey. And Telfer is hotter too.

I'm still dead bitches!

How much does a regular acting job pay on daytime soaps? How do they get paid? By days? Likewise for soap writers? Can you make a decent living of writing for daytime soaps? My thinking is that run of the mill daytime actors (not the stars of the show) make a middle class income while writers are at low middle class - whatever that actually means. I see their pay more as a 'you can call yourself lucky to even get a job in the industry'. Is there some truth to that, or am I completely off?

It depends on the actor and what is negotiated R122. Actors on contract are paid for a minimum number of episodes per week, whether they work or not. For instance most actors have a guarantee of at least 2 days a week. Some older, veteran actors have a lower guarantee - like one day a week. Actors just starting out are probably making a little bit above scale with increases built into the contract for the second and third years.

We recently learned that someone like Ingo Rademacher was making about $3000 an episode with a guarantee of 2 days per week. That's $312,000 a year. After taxes, agent/manager fees, he's probably taking home half of that. Which is a nice middle class and steady income - if you don't blow it.

Someone in another thread said that Maurice Benard makes about $10,000 an episode and has a 4 day a week guarantee, which is a little over $2 Million a year, but cases like Benard's are rare.

In the 80s and 90s the leading actors on most shows were probably making 500K to a mill. Those days are long gone. Deidre Hall and Drake Hogestyn, Melody Thomas Scott and Eric Braeden all left or made a fuss when their pay was cut to under a million, but all eventually agreed to a smaller amount.

Most of the shows now have very, very few people on a contract/guarantee. The ones they do have are either the pillars of the show if they're older, or younger actors. B&B for example....there's a reason they are playing Liam/Wyatt/Steffy/Hope et al to death. They can work those younger (OK they're not spring chickens but you get my point) actors to death, and then mix in a little Brooke/Ridge/Taylor/Sheila.

Soaps have tried to get creative - lots of actors technically on recurring but get to be in opening credits or the like. Actors who come and go throughout the year. That sort of thing.

R123 I don't doubt you read those figures here - I just think they are a little outdated. Maurice might have been making that at one time, but I also remember a more recent Carolyn (moo) Hinsey quote....no one is making a million or more now. He and Snaggletooth Wright might be over 500K but absolutely not over a mil. That info was likely from about 15 years ago.

[quote] In the 80s and 90s the leading actors on most shows were probably making 500K to a mill. Those days are long gone.

Ugh, somehow deleted a line here - that said every show had a few that were probably higher. Dee, Melody and Hans, Lucci, Slezak, Zimmer, Mo Benard etc were probably in the million plus (maybe even 2 mil).

Soap contracts are cyclical. I believe they renew every 16 weeks, so you can get a year contract, but it renews every three months so they can opt to not renew. People starting out on a soap, an unknown cast in a role can probably make 150K a year, not including agents cut, managers or other hangers on.

R126 Every 13 weeks. 13 x 4 = 52.

[quote] Robin Wight doesn't claim soaps

Two Wongs don't make a Wight.

R96, I loved GL during that era but that scene makes a buzz saw look subtle.

Every 13 weeks for newbies. Every 26 weeks for more seasoned performers.

There is no doubt in my mind that General Hospital has one of the best casts of any TV show today. The streaming shows tend to have one slumming Oscar winner surrounded by nobodies, and the network procedural surround one or two exhausted veterans with a bunch of bland models.

I don’t think I’ve ever watch 5 min of a daytime soap. Do they still exist. I did watch Dynasty back in the day. But that was more prime time camp soap- big production- tongue in cheek nonsense.

I guess the pay also depends on how many Emmys you get. iirc David Canary got 6 or 7 Emmys for his work playing dual roles on All My Children and he said in an interview that he felt lucky to make a good living as a soap opera actor. He also did lots of theater work in between.

Deirdre Hall was making $1.1. million a year with a three year contract when she returned to DAYS in 1991, it was so large that NBC agreed to pay for half her salary and Sony the other half. Unheard of for a daytime soap actress

Hall had a bizarre rivalry with Susan Lucci, Lucci knew Hall's contract so when she renegotiated with All My Children in 1992, Lucci went from $1 million a year to $1.3 million,once again keeping her as the highest paid actress on the soaps back then

It was a back and forth between Lucci and Hall for years

Miss Victoria Sleestack easily made well over a mil a year during her heyday.

DL fave Kathy Glass made $1 million when she was lured away from One Life to Live to join The Doctors. She negotiated $10 for each of the record-breaking10,000 teen fan letters she received each month. It was the highest daypart salary seen until that point.

Ray Liotta, Tom Berenger, Claire Bloom, Farley Granger...

off topic, but best looking male cast on a soap opera ever? I'm thinking ' PASSIONS"... gosh knows it was the soap opera that showed the most male skin for any reason and most homoerotic soap ever..

Jimmy Reilly used to jerk off while writing the homo erotic Passions scenes.

#1: Is Paul Telfer now the most shirtless scenes/episodes actor of any soap in soap opera history?

#2: Is Ronn Moss the former Ridge on The bold and the beautiful, the most speedo/bikini actor in scenes/episodes in soap opera history? I think so and his crown is assured since bikini/speedos ended years and years ago and don't think it will ever make a comeback. (perhaps though on Latin telenovas)....

Ronn Moss - He sure was pretty!

The thing is Ronn played Ridge exactly the way Bill Bell wanted. His son, Bradley, has told the story that they went through many many actors in the audition process, but dad finally perked up when Ronn came in, saying he had the "x factor." B&B Producer, Hope Smith, was also there that day, and adds "We knew we'd found our Ridge." .. To me, it seems like Ridge was obviously meant to be this pompous, pretentious peacock of a playboy who thought he was god's gift to women. .. And laughable as Ronn's stilted and wooden delivery could be, it kind of went along with the character's cocky and egotistical persona.

The actors on soaps, many of whom are talented, can't do much to elevate the shitty scripts with melodramatic dialogue. The whole structure of soap operas is geared to make them like they are, and the actors are directed to fit into them. It's not usually the actors fault. It's the genre that's the problem. The storylines are absurd. And the lighting is very general which makes it very flat. It has to be that way to save time. I worked on the NY soaps in my 20's. I would love to have been a regular because it would have been a great paycheck, but I'm glad now that I didn't get sucked into that world. I can't believe this shit is still on the air.

R142... true, also helped that Ronn was a former model, had a flawless chiseled face, that great thick feathered head of hair and was okay with being seeing constantly in the skimpiest of speedos.....

Ronn Moss seems to have gone through a period of unfortunate hairstyles.

First it was colouring it dark deepest brown which made him look like Eddie Munster.

Mr. Moss piled onto that by wearing hair mixed in with bad said dye jobs.

Then there was the "man bun"

I don't care what anyone says, Ronn Moss looks as if he smells cookies, or at least would assist if there was a rush.

See DF link to follow

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

I'll give you though in his prime there were few to none better.

My ex-bf was an under-five on some of the NY soaps in the late 90s/early 00s. He had great training as an actor, but he told me he could never get a contract role because he didn't have a six-pack or a square jaw that could cut glass. He and the other male actors with great training but with average looks used to sit around and make fun of the underwear models that were hired in lead roles. He said in daytime basically women were hired for looks and acting ability, while the guys were hired primarily for their looks.

r148 they had to have some level of skill otherwise it would a screen full of Antonio Sabato Jr. and Hunter Tylos.

"...they had to have some level of skill otherwise it would a screen full of Antonio Sabato Jr. ..."

Am not seeing a problem here...

Soap operas are just so camp. No wonder Carol Burnette was able to set such a rise out of people.

If you're one of the lucky ones, you might get the chance to star on an MTV show with homo-erotic undertones for a time.

Bad acting? C'mon, how you could possibly say that?

Bad acting? You jest?

Long time AMC fan, and here were the best Daytime actresses in a scene with a model they hired thinking they could make him into a good actor. He got canned some months later but he was so cringeworthy. There are worse scenes with him just with younger actors that can't try to hid his bad acting.

I always wanted to kick Ada Hobson in the cunt!!!!

Ada didn't have a cunt. She had a 13x8.5 dick. I should know!

I remember Ray Liotta from Another World.

Wow, r154, that is some great acting all around. 🤮

Tge best acting ever was on AW when Ada shoved her 13 x 8.5 dick up Liz Matthews’ twat. That scene won Irene Dailey her Emmy.

Let's not forget Blair Underwood on One Life to Live. (Also, Sammy Davis, Jr., did a guest shot.)

Connie Ford was godawful, always looking over at the cue cards. My mom was a huge AW fan, but even she would admit that Connie was terrible. Yelling is not acting.

King Charles & Cammie did an episode of Eastenders for the Jubilee.

I see Paul Telfer and Remmington Hoffman starring in Dumb & Dumber: The Series, streaming exclusively on Peacock.

Telfer is an excellent actor.

Hoffman, not so much. Very average. I think he lucked into the role. And notice, he's been there for quite some time and still isn't on contract. Totally replaceable.

I'm surprised that anyone at ⏳ DOOL ! has a contract.

So, who was the worst actor on soaps? Ronn Moss? Drake Hogestyn? Someone else?

R166... I actually liked, no LOVED, Drake Hogestyn's bad acting... Back in the day, when his hair was long, still dark brown, had that great hairy muscled body he was sex on a stick, and his over the top macho acting was so bad it was sexy... He was so macho and sexual it was both comical and sexy....

Love the storyline how he was tricked into having sex nd more than once, with ugly buck tooth weirdo Susan disguised as beautiful Kristen, which just a blonde wig and some teeth straightening dentures! LOL! He had no idea who and what he was screwing (and loved it!) until her deception was exposed..

Later, his character felt embarrassed, shame and a bit of anger at being duped and "how could he not have known and tell the difference?" laugh! How indeed!

The truth is he loved ugly susan's puss and she can forever claim she captured mr. stud of salem and he loved it!...love this kinky to me power control role reversal of the handsome cocky macho stud taken down, conquered, captured, by a much less beta person (i.e the ugly weirdo susan)...ULTIMATE sexual power trip for someone like the Susan character....

Telfer is too roided up to be cast as anything but a dumb, muscle bound jock.

And I don't think he'll be nominated for a Daytime Emmy fir his performance as Scary Evil Clown on DAYS.

Drake Hogestyn and Ronn Moss are two examples of actors who aren't the best at the work, but who do/did an amazing job of embodying the character in such as way that everything they did was just believable and worked. I'll get some pushback for this, but I think the same thing about Susan Lucci. Not a great actor, but she WAS Erica Kane. And every other part she played, she was some version of Erica Kane.

r167 DOOOOOOOOOCCC DOOOOOOOOOC....the gist of Drake's acting.

Victoria Rowell years ago alleged that MAB was making over 30,000$ a week. While some alleged that former DOOL HW Dena Higley was making about 40,000$ her last time there. One of the reasons why Dena was brought back due to all the complaints that DOOL had become "too gay" and that something needed to be done about it.

Eric Braeden was rumored to allegedly at one point be making between 1.4 to 1.7 million dollars a year. There was a rumor claiming that Alison Sweeney surpassed Deidre Hall to become the highest paid actress at DOOL.

I think Billy Magnussen might possibly be the last soap actor to have broken out into bigger career beyond soaps.

[quote] Telfer is too roided

When's the last time you saw him? He's just very fit now; still very defined, but he's lost some of the bulk and doesn't read like some bodybuilder on roids. Plus, he's got his natural pelt on display, so no waxing. Photo from this week.

You forgot something r170.

😏 [bold] And That's A Fact !

Paul Telfer; from neck down I'd say yes, but above doesn't really make me shiver none.

You're forgetting r171 when Billy Flynn and when he finally gets his Oscar award that so far has alluded him.

I thought it was somewhat common knowledge around these parts about about AS become Days highest paid actor or allegations claiming that Deidre was behind the firing of the NuTeens.

It’s hard to believe that Drake Hogestyn and Ronn Moss were never nominated for an Emmy.

After looking @ Telfer's most famous career moment at r174, one can easily understand why he hasn't been snapped up by a major studio. How could he ever possibly top that Oscar worthy performance?