Heroes, Heroines And Villians: The Daytime Edition

[RuAsRuAnAu]

Best Heroes

Nikolas Cassadine- GH

Jasper Jacks- GH

Robert Scorpio- GH

Cass Winthrop- AW

Best Heroines

Vicky- AW

Rachel- AW

Anna Devane- GH/AMC

Carly Jacks- GH

Laura Spencer- GH

Brenda Barrett- GH

Felicia Jones- GH

Lily Snyder- ATWT

Hayley Santos- AMC

Brooke English- AMC

Bianca Montgomery- AMC

Best Villians

Roger Thorpe- GL

Carl Hutchins- AW

Iris Carrington Wheeler- AW

Michael Cambius- AMC

[DaytimeFan]

Best Heroes

Paul Williams & Andy Richards Y&R

Mac Scorpio GH

Jackson Montgomery AMC

Best Heroines

Rachel Cory AW

Hope Williams Brady DAYS

Brooke Logan B&B

Felicia Gallant (sober) AW

Best Villains

Carl Hutchins AW

Roger Thorpe GL

Victor Newman Y&R

Jack Abbott Y&R

Stefano DiMera DAYS

Best Villainesses

Stephanie Forrester B&B

Katherine Chancellor Y&R

Jill Foster Abbott Y&R

Kate Roberts DAYS

Vivian Alamain DAYS

Sally Spectra B&B

Vanessa Bennett Courtland AMC

Iris Cory AW

Felicia Gallant (drunk) AW

Erica Kane AMC

and Alexis Carrington Colby DYNASTY

[RuAsRuAnAu]

Too slutty to be a heroine.

Way too cartoonish to be one of daytime's best villians.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

^Nice to know you set the bar in terms of taste, RuRu.

[Khan]

>> Way too cartoonish to be one of daytime's best villains

So says the individual who ranks AMC's Michael Cambias with the likes of Carl Hutchins and Roger Thorpe.

[RuAsRuAnAu]

At least they still possessed qualities that made them good villians. Stefano DiMera lost all that.

[Graciecat]

Though a more complex villain certainly has some redeeming qualities, I think there's something wonderful about a cartoonish villain. I love Stefano and Helena, and they are both pretty lacking in vulnerablity and completey over-the top. To me, though, that one dimensional quality is very soapy and kind of awesome.

There are many kinds of villains. Perhaps, RuRu, you would do better to let people decide for themselves how to define the term.

[RuAsRuAnAu]

Yes, there are varying kinds of villians and I value your opinion.

Please do not address by that, Graciecat.

[RuAsRuAnAu]

Best Hero

Sean Donely (GH)

Best Heroine

Tiffany Hill/Elsie Mae Crumholtz (GH)

[JackPeyton]

Heros-

GL's Josh Lewis. He is a flawed hero whpo has made mistakes. he isnt perfect, nor does he claim to be. But he is, for the msot part, an honest standup guy who truley loves the people he loves.

Days Bo Brady. He has always been the "badass" hero. I think the char was more of a typical hero when RKK was in the role tho. But he has always and will awlays bea hero.

~~~~

Heroines

i dont really care cuz i hate almost all of them...

Days Billie on Lisa Rinnas first run. She had her flaws and screwd up alot but she was a great heroin. She overcame her past, let love in with bo, and matured so much to the point where the love of her life picked her, she left him so he could give his son a family. (cuz lets not forget ppl, bo did chose Billie over Hopeless)

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Best Villans/Villainesses-

they have all been said....

~~~~

Best Of Both Worlds-

Now lets adress Sami brady. Former bad girl villan turned simi-good/simi-bad heroin. She has always been that villan you felt for, and sometiems even rooted for. But in recent years she has actually flipepd it up and turned into the shows main heroin, IMO anyways. Ali Sweeney is great at either one and she has always kept sami's edge and heart, no matter what direction they take her char into.

[RuAsRuAnAu]

DO THEY MISS BEING BAD? FIVE OUT OF SIX FORMER VILLAINS SAY NO!

Source: Robert Rorke, September 1990, SOD

Villainy may have become an overrated on daytime. To hear the actors who’ve played the warped and the wicked tell it, such roles, while initially thrilling, are ultimately unsatisfying. As they torture both hero and heroine, the unsuspecting and the dim-witted, villains invariably get the meatiest scenes and beat a quick path to infamy, earning the audience’s hatred and fascination. But treachery has a built-in limitation. There’s usually only one color to play: black. For some former villains on daytime, being bad wasn’t enough.

Kate Collins (Natalie, AMC) says that she doesn’t “miss the bad, bad part of Natalie at all, even when she didn’t have a story.” Recalling some of her blackest moments in Pine Valley, the actress, who came on the show as direct romantic threat to Susan Lucci (Erica) and Jean LeClerc (Jean), was horrified when she had to go after Lucci with a gun. “The only saving grace was that the gun was empty,” she says. “I went after Erica and suggested that she jump off a building. I have a phobia about guns. My greatest fear is that if you have a weapon it can be turned and used on you. Susan, the prop guy and I would check the barrel every five minutes.” Collins hastens to add that the show no longer uses the real thing. “The last time we used guns on the show, they were plastic,” she sighs with relief.

Natalie’s evolution into a character who’s “grown up a little bit, taken people into consideration more,” Collins contends, gives her more to work with as a performer. “The show really made a commitment to Natalie and formed her well enough that she can be flexible. I love where she can be flexible. I love where she is now.” Currently involved in a more contemporary romance than the Gothic liaisons she has been accustomed to, Natalie has had to pay her dues to get there. The villain, for a brief period, became the victim when Natalie married manipulative Palmer Cortlandt (James Mitchell). She enjoyed his wealth and eventually became his most sorry pawn after she had an affair with his son Ross and was later raped by him.

Another character who learned her lesson for being wholeheartedly nasty was Lauren Fenmore of [Y&R]. Lauren was the snotty teen-ager who deliberately set out to steal Traci Abbott’s crush, Danny Romalotti (Michael Damian), heaping scorn on the fat Traci (Beth Maitland) along the way. As Tracey E. Bregman-Recht recalls, “Traci got back at me. She dumped a whole chocolate sundae on my head.” Bregman-Recht considers Lauren’s abuse of Traci the worst thing her character has ever done. “In looking back, I never understood why [Lauren was so hateful],” she says. “[Maybe it was because] Lauren never had the family that Traci had. She grew up by the skin of her teeth.”

Lauren paid dearly when she got a little older and Shawn Garrett (Grant Kramer) buried her alive in his mother’s grave. “I was in a pine box,” Tracey laughs. “Steven Ford [ex-Andy] put his legs in there so I could hold onto something and so I could see some light. I was a big baby.” The actress makes no bones about it when asked if Lauren’s best days are behind her. “I’ve never had more fun in my entire life,” she says. “I really had quite a long run. Oh, sure, Lauren has to mature. I think if [Executive Producer] William J. Bell had kept her exactly as she was, the audience would have gotten tired of her. The things I loved the most about the character were not the rotten stuff; it was the mischievous stuff like Paul’s [Doug Davidson] centerfold. The most enjoyable part for the audience was when they could laugh with Lauren’s bitterness. People don’t know what to expect from her.”

Villains and villainesses need redemption if they expect to have any kind of longevity on soaps and no one knows this than Victoria Wyndham, who for the past eighteen years has played mostly upstanding Rachel Cory on Another World. Rachel began life as a she-devil, with another actress, Robin Strasser, in the role, and when Wyndham stepped in, “I was pretty much an unremitting heavy for the first three years,” she says. “Sending baby clothing to Alice [Jacqueline Courtney] after she knew she couldn’t have any more children,” was one of her more heinous offenses. But then Rachel met Mac Cory (the late Douglass Watson) and AW launched a love story that entirely turned her character around.”

“Mac understood her for what she was, her good points despite her anti-social behaviour,” says Wyndham. “She’d never had that kind of unselfish attention from a man in her life, someone who was willing to make her a project, who seemed to understand her mistakes and make little of them.” The actress says that she never had any problem with playing Rachel as a heavy, but didn’t see why she should interpret the character that way if the audience couldn’t see why she was so awful. “Rachel’s anti-social behaviour was a way of thinking she was unlovable.”

Although Rachel’s days as a hellion are long behind her, Wyndham declares that she still “likes Rachel’s edges. To this day, no matter how righteous Rachel is, she still has a temper. She’s impatient, strong-willed and can be quite stern.”

**article continued below**

[RuAsRuAnAu]

**continuation of above article**

Villains don’t have to fall in love to find redemption. Causing the near-death of [GH]’s heroine Laura Vining (Genie Francis) was the turning point for evil-prostitute-turned-student-nurse Bobbie Spencer (Jacklyn Zeman). “The character had a past,” Zeman says, chuckling. “Within a few months of being on the show, Bobbie was supposed to be calculating, ambitious, out to catch a wealthy husband so she wouldn’t have to work. Bobbie also had this thing for Scotty [Kin Shriner], but he liked Laura. Bobbie tricked Scotty into getting drunk and making Laura think they were having an affair. Laura drove off a cliff and almost died. Bobbie just looked in the mirror and said, ‘What have I done?’ ” Of course, in later years, Bobbie lived out every ounce of her bad karma. She learned that she could never have children. She was beaten by her first husband, D.L. Brock, cheated on by her second husband, Jake Meyer, and was even briefly paralyzed from an injection of some silly serum.

Zeman left all that skulduggery and suffering behind as Bobbie settled into her even life as the wife of successful neurosurgeon Tony Jones (Brad Maule). She doesn’t miss any of the melodrama. “The bitch roles are the flashy parts. They’re the characters the audience enjoys watching,” she says. “A real good bitch is predictable; a lot of times they don’t have a whole lot of depth. Even though it was fun to play, there wasn’t as much to be proud of. I’d much rather have history, longevity on the show. Having been in daytime for so many years, I feel really lucky. I go home in my car and I feel good about my character. You get to give something back and the audience sticks with her.

As former alcoholic shrew Susan Stewart on [ATWT], Marie Masters said that she did so many awful things to poor Kim Hughes (Kathryn Hays), among others, that she can’t remember all of them, but when she was doing her dirty work, she played it to the hilt. “I did the most horrible things and, when I did them, I always played that I was totally justified,” says Masters. “Susan was just evil. Her newly realized relationship with her daughter Emily [whom Susan had abandoned] has redeemed her.” Now that Susan has the option of being bad, Marie finds the role more enjoyable to play. “Part of the fun of being redeemed is that you get to play two things,” she believes. “You get to play all the things that have gone awry, plus you get to fight against all your old urges.” Susan’s given in to a fair number of them this year, including a dizzying bout with addictive pain-killers and an eyebrow-raising fling with the stuffed-shirt husband of her old nemesis, Kim. “I got to do some delicious things this year. It’s always more interesting to play somebody on the edge who has some conflict in their character. That’s where most people are,” the actress declares.

Most soap villains serve their time in the stocks as the town pariah, but few have endured such public outrage as Matthew Ashford as Jack Devereaux on [DOOL]. The actor reports that after Jack raped Kayla (Mary Beth Evans), the show’s fans wanted blood. “People are very moralistic. They expected Jack to be killed off,” he says. Devereaux never even went to jail, but was the object of [DOOL’s] vigilante justice: he suffered numerous beatings and lost a kidney after he was thrown off a roof.

It was all rather much for Ashford, who wouldn’t mind a little subtlety now and then. “I don’t miss those days because that was a little one-sided for me,” says Ashford. “I had just finished playing Cagney McCleary on Search For Tomorrow, and he was too good to be true. With Jack, I was always trying to find the positive because they always wrote the negative. I didn’t have to be menacing. The music did it for me.”

The actor would still like to address the issue of Kayla’s rape – psychologically, through Jack’s impotence. “There’s a certain impotence in the way he approaches his romance with Jennifer [Melissa Brennan],” he says. “[i’d like to have] the mind willing but the body not there. The baggage comes along.” He realizes that on DAYS turf such a suggestion “would have freaked the writers out.” His idea is a little too late” Ashford is getting the full DAYS heartthrob treatment and those who reviled him are clamoring for more. Seldom has a soap villain made amends so quickly.

[DevotedToAMC]

Best Heroes

Mateo Santos, AMC

Leo DuPres, AMC

Ryan Lavery, AMC (1998-2002 only)

Aidan Devane, AMC

Best Heroines

Bianca Montgomery, AMC

Hayley Santos, AMC

Lily Montgomery, AMC

Maria Santos, AMC

Natalie Dillon, AMC

Anna Devane, AMC/GH

Dixie Cooney, AMC

Brooke English, AMC

Best Villains

Michael Cambias, AMC

Dr. Jonathan Kinder, AMC

Will Cortlandt, AMC

Ritchie Novak, AMC

Adam Chandler, AMC

Palmer Cortlandt, AMC

Ray Gardner, AMC

Billy Clyde Tuggle, AMC

David Hayward, AMC

Best Villainesses

Janet Green, AMC

Vanessa Cortlandt, AMC

Erica Kane, AMC

Kendall Hart, AMC

[kalbir]

I'm drawn more to the villains than to heroes.

Y&R:

Victor Newman

Jack Abbott (RIP Terry Lester)

Jill Abbott (Brenda Dickson)

Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown)

Michael Baldwin

Phyllis Summers

B&B:

Stephanie Forrester

Sheila Carter

As the World Turns:

James Stenbeck

Lucinda Walsh

Guiding Light:

Roger Thorpe (RIP Michael Zaslow)

Alexandra Spaulding (Beverlee McKinsey)

Blake Thorpe (Sherry Stringfield)

[AMCer]

Best Heroes/Heroines

Lauren Fenmore, Y&R

Josh Lewis, GL

Bianca Montgomery, AMC

Brooke English, AMC

Natalie Marlowe Dillon, AMC

Hope Williams, Days

Marlena Evans, Days

Holly Norris, GL

Laura Spencer, GH

Phil Brent, AMC

Best Villains/Villainesses

Sheila Carter, Y&R, B&B

Janet Greene, AMC

Susan Piper, GL

Eddie Dorrance, AMC

Ray Gardner, AMC

Billy Clyde Tuggle, AMC

James Stenbeck, ATWT

Roger Thorpe, GL

Dr. Jonathon Kinder