Actors who have either appeared on Daytime TV and those who havent but still talk smack about it

Morgan Freeman-He spoke to Nelson Branco & basically said after 100 years its time to say goodbye. Plus last night he was the subject of Oprah's Master-Class On OWN and completely crapped on his time on The Electric Company and never mentioned his stints On Texas, Ryan's Hope & Another World. MF came across as a total TV Snob

Lauren Holly also talked to Nelson Branco in 2009 when he was still at TV Guide Canada and when he asked how she felt about soaps ending (She was on AMC as Julie from 86-89) basically said soaps dont tell good story and were all crap

I know it rubs people the wrong way when they love something and someone puts it down but I really see nothing wrong with what Morgan Freeman or some other actors have said. So what he and others don't hold their earlier days in the soap close to their heart he doesn't have to. To tell the truth how many of his fans know he was on a soap, I sure didn't.

Like it or not soaps are not in the same league as primetime, film or theater as a sports fan I like to think of it in terms of there is high school basketball and then there's the NBA.

This is silly. When I worked retail I bashed my previous grocery jobs. When I worked at a gym I felt doing retail and grocery were beneath me. In college when I got a crappy role in a show, it was known that I thought it was crap. People have egos. Working in a certain industry doesn't mean you to have to like it or respect it so a few fans don't cry.

Agreed. I worked at David Jones and Myer and they were both crappy jobs. I've moved on passed my retail days but I'm not going to wax poetic about those days now just because its in the past or because I should be grateful about the experience.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and can feel however they want about their daytime experiences.

Like it or not soaps are not in the same league as primetime, film or theater as a sports fan I like to think of it in terms of there is high school basketball and then there's the NBA.

This is exactly the problem I speak of. Acting is Acting. If Your an actor you act in different mediums. It shouldnt be the medium for the reason u chose a part, it should be based on whatever has the best role, wheter, that be Daytime, Primetime, film or theater.

Actors on soaps and even theater tend to work longer and harder a lot would say to produce this entertainment than a film or primetime show.

Edited January 24, 201213 yr by John

IMHO Daytime Soap Operas Are Not Training Grounds. If that were the case that would mean at some point we stop learning & Growing. IMHO, Daytime Soap Operas are repertory companies. Plain & simple.

Agreed. I worked at David Jones and Myer and they were both crappy jobs. I've moved on passed my retail days but I'm not going to wax poetic about those days now just because its in the past or because I should be grateful about the experience.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and can feel however they want about their daytime experiences.

As I said somewhere at towards the beginning of the thread, it's not that the stars "tell the truth", it's how they say it. I think every soap fan knows that daytime ain't Shakespeare. But we also know that it's a genre that has been filled with talent. When someone acts like they're now above it, why shouldn't fans call BS?

Acting is acting at the heart of it, but there are differences from one medium to the other, each medium posing its own set of challenges. I think soap acting which involves very quick memorization and the cranking out of episodes at a frenzied pace can encourage a lot of bad habits, short cuts, and tricks that some performers rely on. Frankly, who can blame the better actors who actually have technique for doing this from time to time, because if your character's emotional life is particularly demanding, one could burn out/break down. Thing is, soaps are known for hiring not so great actors and the writing is widely believed to be dreck. And we fans know that to be true at times, and of course there have been actors who have shared that opinion. Great soap writing and acting is such a feat, that's why we admire it so much when it happens. I think a lot of daytime actors see the medium for the machine it can be and I think it's logical that there have been actors who didn't care for that aspect and don't look back so fondly on their soap years.

As I said somewhere at towards the beginning of the thread, it's not that the stars "tell the truth", it's how they say it. I think every soap fan knows that daytime ain't Shakespeare. But we also know that it's a genre that has been filled with talent. When someone acts like they're now above it, why shouldn't fans call BS?

Right. If someone doesn't look back on their daytime experience as a great slumber party, then I'm not exactly furious, but there's a way to say it and a way which ends up seeming like they are describing an STD.

As I said somewhere at towards the beginning of the thread, it's not that the stars "tell the truth", it's how they say it. I think every soap fan knows that daytime ain't Shakespeare. But we also know that it's a genre that has been filled with talent. When someone acts like they're now above it, why shouldn't fans call BS?

+1

I think that the only real problem I've had when an actor looking back negatively on their daytime experience is Brian Bloom. Bloom was incredibly harsh about it, yet Grayson McCouch, a far more successful actor outside daytime than Bloom has ever been was happy to have the role. I guess I just found Bloom unnecessarily harsh about the role

IMHO Daytime Soap Operas Are Not Training Grounds.

Yes they are. Some actors move on from that training ground (Michelle Forbes, Judith Light, Debbi Morgan, Cynthis Watros, Jessica Tuck, Nathan Fillion, Kelli Giddish, etc..) and others don't. If you love soaps, that's fine but stop trying to paint these shows as something more than what they are. They are - or more accurately they were - a way for actors to earn a living working their craft but that doesn't make them some kind of underappreciated art form. If the actors who worked in soaps want to call them crap, then let them. Who better than them would know?

You left off that IMHO Soaps are repertory companies. Actors never stop learning or growing. Never had an issue with a soap star complaning about their time on a soap its when soap stars trash the whole medium

Edited January 25, 201213 yr by John

It's so tough to say sometimes because in the past when a former soap actor said, "These shows are crap," that was not fair - many soaps were incredible for years. Unfortunately, in the last 10-15 years, I can't exactly say that.

I know Meg Ryan and Ryan Phillipe both seemed to be ashamed of their time on soaps.

In Interview Magazine a few years back Ryan seemed proud of his soap past--he only spoke briefly about it but said it gave him more training than any other show that would hire a teen could have and it was a groundbreaking story. I'm not sure where the disrespect comes from (aside how uncomfortable he was when Jay leno did that infamous interview--which would make anyone angry)

Like many others I do think that daytime has lost the respect that it once carried. As a fan, I will speak the positves and negatives of daytime. I think what stings when you hear people like Morgan Freeman, Meg Ryan, Ryan Phillpe, etc speak poorly about their daytime experience is that daytime allowed many of them to hone their skills and essentially get their foot in the door in the entertainment world so to speak.

I still would like to hear quotes for some of these people. I don't think Feeman's comments for example are all that insulting to soap fans (though I get the reaction--but from what he's said recently it did seem that he was reacting more to a general question). JaneAusten mentioned that a lot of these people are also discouraged to discount their soap work from their resumes. When you become as big as many of them have that seems genuinely disengenuous at best, but.

Like many others I do think that daytime has lost the respect that it once carried. As a fan, I will speak the positves and negatives of daytime.

It was arguably a very brief period that soap actors were given all that much credit when they worked in other genres or told to mention their soap past. Sarah Michelle Gellar talked about how when she was doing auditions between AMC and Buffy she wasn't even allowed by her publicist to mention her daytime Emmy.

I think it can be annoying when someone acts like their daytime experience was a wasteland and they are now superior. I guess a lot of it depends on the material they had at the time and the material they've had since. For instance, I thought Ryan Phillipe had good material when he was on OLTL. Since that time, he has probably mostly been famous for his ass, and who he married. So the idea of him feeling that era was inferior always kind of annoyed me.

I'm beginning to sound like a Philipe fanboy, and I don;'t think he's done much worthwhile on screen but shown his ass--but the few times I've seen him mention his OLTL role it's always been very positive. Unless this was something he said just when he was breaking into features--and fairly young--I'm still surprised he said anything else, elsewhere.

But... This is a common problem even among the best theatre actors when they move to screen--for some reason they're often (unless they are charcter actors) told to play down--or they play down themselves--their theatre success, particularly if it wasn't some Tony award winning huge commercial hit.

Actors generally seem very egocentric and self absorbed,yes even in daytime many are like this. Hell look at the swipe Eric Braeden took at Neil Patrick Harris who seems to be one of the few niceguys out there.

I'd actually never heard of this, and though I dislike NPH due to personal gossip I've heard, he seems to have always acted professionally. All I could find online was this http://www.gossipcop.com/neil-patrick-harris-eric-braeden-d-bag-dbag-twitter-douchebag-how-i-met-your-mother/ which doesn't diss Braeden for being a soap actor...

That's true, but most actors tend to do an OK job with it. Even actors like SMG always had good things to say about her soap work and went back for a cameo.

Except she didn't before Buffy. mind you she was smart and refused to say anything until cast on Buffy--but...