Fast-paced fiction and family make soaps buzz for daytime actors

As soap stars ready to come to Marco Island this weekend, some old and new stars talked about their careers in daytime television drama.

While only 48, Michael O'Leary knows the business well, having first appeared in his role as Dr. Rick Bauer on Guiding Light in 1983.

"I and my best buddy, (and co-star) Grant Aleksander, started as kids (in the series) and we have fond memories," he said. "I'm not a classical daytime leading man. To some extent I'm more like the guy next door. The writers have been consistent with me and I'm more like the daytime Tom Hanks, the guy who everyone can count on. I've only been married four times, a pretty good record (for soaps)."

O'Leary and others talk about how the cast becomes family and how keeping your nose clean, work hard, and being professional, gives actors a pretty good chance of sticking around.

O'Leary's career has taken him to nighttime drama, movies and theater. In comparing a workday between daytime and nighttime television, he admits that soap operas are more work.

"I'm more like a factory worker," he said. "We might go through 85 pages of dialogue in a day, while when I appeared in Law & Order we might take 10 days for the same amount of material."

While he says he doesn't take himself seriously when it comes to his character, he does try to find something in the character that can provide a bit of a twist.

"I think these days that people want to feel a sense of security through relationships," he said. "A father and son scene resonates with the people."

Dan Gauthier, 43, has a huge list of nighttime television credits before joining One Life to Live in 2003 as Kevin Buchanan. Soap fans doubled their pleasure in seeing him on All My Children for many episodes in 2005 when his wife faked a pregnancy and her brother stole a baby for her following a plane crash from a cast member of All My Children. Then that cast member stole the baby back.

Have you got it?

In talking about how long a theme goes in the drama, "I think our soap fans follow it and do understand (what's going on) pretty well," he said.

Marcy Rylan, 25, joined Guiding Light in March. She said her work with Hayden Panetiere of Guiding Light in the movie Bring It On: All or Nothing before she joined the television program was a real benefit.

"It was really fun doing the movie with Hayden and then being able to work with him in Guiding Light," she said.

Being new to soap opera, Rylan said as an actor the pace of the show makes it hard to keep track of what is going on each week.

"They give us outlines of each episode and I read the whole outline so I have a feeling for what the other actors are doing," she said.

Caitlin Van Zandt, 20, appeared in episodes of The Sopranos and Hope & Faith in the past year, joining Guiding Light in April.

Having also done film, she said, "In film there was more time to imagine, to make presumptions about the character. (With Guiding Light) there is a lot of memorization and no one sits with you to do a character study." She says the cast is fantastic and she has made a lot of friends.

"Kim Zimmer always has the best stories about her weekends," Van Zandt said. Zimmer should. She is a nine-time nominee and three-time Emmy Award winner as best leading actress and three-time winner as best lead actress by Soap Opera Digest.

Trevor St. John, 34, who may have one of the more edgy characters as Todd Manning in One Life to Live, will be a popular star coming to Marco Island for the first time. In just three years he has become a major focal point, with viewers trying to figure out whether he is a good, or bad, guy.

"I think what I enjoy about the character is the contradiction of both that can exist within you," St. John said. At times he's also played the concerned husband and father.

"I think that conveys my living in a small, rural town," he said. "Family is really important to me. I lived in Orchard Prairie, outside Spokane, (Washington), where my cousins, aunts and uncles lived."

At the moment he has fans on the edge, wondering whether he is a cunning and calculating person avenging his late brother, or Todd Manning, resurrected from a crypt with a hidden agenda. As soaps go, the answer is supposed to be revealed on Aug. 26.

O'Leary says shows are also feeling the budget crunch, like many businesses.

"In the last four to five years the demographics that we are all shooting for are shrinking," he said. "A lot of young women we were aiming at are now in the workforce. With technological revolutions and other diversions our audiences are shrinking. Shows are trimming their cast."

Maybe that will be a new soap opera. But if it is like All My Children and Guiding Light there may never be an ending scene.