Iconic on more than one soap

[Khan]

 

Wait, she's dead?  I always assumed Kelly just disappeared.

[soapfan770]

 

 

Thanks lol I see that now haha I was trying so hard not to repeat names but it backfired lol. 
 

Quinn Redeker did Nick Reed & Rex Sterling on Y&R and  Alex Marshall on Days 
 

Maree Cheatham: Marie Horton on Days and Stephanie on SFT(I think there’s a couple other soaps too). 
 

Galen Gering as Luis on Passions and Rafe on Days

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I think she was presumed dead following a drug overdose while she had held Jack captive and tied down to the bed, but it was never fully explained as I think Jack thought she was dead but then had some experience with her that he couldn’t tell if it was real or a hallucination. What a mess. As Vee said it’s too bad the show was unable to keep Watros around she was great in what started out as a mysterious and haunted character. That changed with McClain’s casting and her going to the opera with Jack lol.

[Vee]

Kelly turned up dead one morning in bed with Jack, who she had imprisoned on behalf of Marco the druglord doppelgänger and tried to drug and torture into falling in love with her, a la Misery. I found the show utterly unwatchable so I have no clue if they ever explained who killed her.

[amybrickwallace]

 

She also played Lucy's Aunt Charlene on GH (and on PC for awhile, if I'm not mistaken).

[All My Shadows]

Louise Shaffer - Allison, WTHI; Serena, EON; Rae, RH; Stephanie, SFT (along with other short runs; her EON run was short but still considered iconic)

[Paul Raven]

John Reilly was popular as Dan on ATWT and Sean on GH.

[Khan]

 

From what I can gather from the Internet, they didn't.  I guess we can assume Marco killed her or had her killed?

[soapfan770]

Probably. The show was also very busy at the time turning both Neil and Avery into psychopaths and had Adam seeing ghosts not surprised it was left unaddressed during the worst of Pratt.

I never watched much of GH but I had seen his name for years in soap mags before I finally saw him as Del on Sunset Beach. The sequences of when Annie would be dragged into hell by Del on the show were hilariously entertaining compared to anything Passions ever did. 

[amybrickwallace]

 

Yup, she was also Goldie Kane on AMC!!

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[Darn]

The word is iconic, people. Not employed.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Darn

[Faulkner]

Yeah there are a few examples I might quibble with (and even my own, I’m like, yes—Alexis is a lead character who’s been front and center on GH for decades and won NLG an additional Emmy—but is she iconic like Julia was, who was legendary to me, and I’d never even watched her SaBa heyday?) Hey, everyone has their own gauge for iconicity hehe.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Faulkner

[carolineg]

 

I think Alexis is fairly iconic, but I see your argument.  I can't really remember any real legendary story about Alexis except maybe the Sonny affair.

But then again, I am not sure how iconic Days Justin or GH's Ned are either.  I love them, but is Ned really an icon?  Is Justin? Popular  B supporting players, yes, but not really more than that.

It's like Stephan Nicholas with Patch/GH's Stefan.  They were both popular characters but Stefan is nowhere near as legendary as Patch.  

Eileen Davidson's YR Ashley/Days Kristen et all is truly the best example for this thread.

[Faulkner]

Thinking about it: If I were making a (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) definition for myself, I’d ask, are these roles among the 100 (or more generously) 200 most memorable or important portrayals of characters in soap history? Going by that definition, I’d say Eileen (Ashley/Kristen), Bev McKinsey (Iris/Alexandra), Susan Flannery (Laura/Stephanie), Peter Bergman (Cliff/Jack), Marcy Walker (Liza/Eden), Jane Elliot (Tracy/Carrie), and a few others would make the cut. My previous examples of Ellen Wheeler and NLG wouldn’t qualify on second thought. But that’s just me. A lot of people I’m sure would beg to differ.

Edit: maybe Ellen Wheeler would lol. She really excelled at the dual role on AW and then played one of the most famous and pioneering HIV/AIDS stories in soap history.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Faulkner

[carolineg]

 

Ellen Wheeler and NLG are still very debatable.  Alexis and Cindy would not make my top 25 list of GH/AMC characters of all time.  Maybe top 50?  I think your list is fine, but going off that do you count failures?  Like ED's Kelly Capwell or Marcy Walker's Tangie on GL lol.  Or even Jane Elliot as Day's Anjelica?  Not a failure, but certainly not a legend. 

 

It's definitely arbitrary because I could argue MBE's Katherine Bell was more iconic than Matt Ashford's Tom Hardy on GH, but neither were great lol.  Or were the original characters they played too good to overcome it?  Genie Francis was fine as Diana Coleville on days, had a pretty popular pairing with RoJohn, but it wasn't Laura, so we don't consider much of anything.  But I would definitely say I prefer her to Staci Greason's Isabella, who is someone I consider fairly iconic if only because we had to be reminded of her tragic death ALL the time.

 

Lol!  I am about to go off on a tangent but I would consider characters like Stone/Lily from GH iconic because of the story they propelled, but they weren't that great of characters in general.  Their stories just made them iconic.

[Faulkner]

I wouldn’t count the failures. Just the roles that made an outsize impact. Does the character  (as played by the actors) have an impactful place in soap history? If we were making a multi-part documentary on the history of soaps, would it be a huge oversight to not talk about them, even just in passing?

 

But when you think of true icons, the list is somewhat short. That’s why I guess it’s a major achievement have done it more than once. So many stars flop trying to recapture past successes. Like you mentioned Tangie was a flop, but, thankfully, MW immediately redeemed herself by resurrecting Liza to renewed acclaim. (She’d be iconic just from her first run as Liza alone, of course.)

 

I would argue Stone is definitely iconic. Lily not so much. We cared about Stone in addition to his sad and never-seen-before story, and we still talk about him. Lily is best known for getting blown up.

 

I was thinking that when NLG passes away, Alexis would almost certainly be mentioned first, simply because she played her so long and more recently, even though Julia had much greater pop-culture impact as one half of a supercouple (Mason/Julia) and was highly regarded as a pioneering feminist character in soaps. But Alexis would be a footnote in soap history.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Faulkner