Everyone knows that soaps are an endangered species, but the decline of afternoon stories has also deprived young actors of one thing they can’t live without — a place to break in.
Movie star Julianne Moore is so appreciative of her years on “As the World Turns” that she agreed to make one last appearance before the show goes off the air this fall.
Moore, who, in true soap fashion, played two characters — half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina Hughes — on the show from 1985-88, appeared in an episode two weeks ago that celebrated the wedding anniversary of her TV parents, Bob and Kim Hughes.
When “ATWT” goes off the air, only six soaps will remain. California condors are better protected.
The slow death of daytime drama means more than just the end of stories about evil twins and double-crossing siblings.
It will mean the end of TV’s first School of Hard Knocks — the place where so many stars learned their chops, the kind of stuff they don’t teach in college drama departments.
Kelly Ripa remembers ABC taking a big chance on her when she was cast as Hayley Vaughn on “All My Children” in 1990.
After numerous call backs and two screen tests, Ripa, now 39, was told by then-casting director Joan D’Incecco she was “too green” — and Ripa admits, “I was the worst actress. [But] she saw beyond the bad.”
The soap whipped her into shape.
“I would have never known about lighting and angles and shadows,” she says. “Where do they teach that? Not in acting school.
“Acting downstage and looking downstage while you’re talking to eight people behind you — it takes one full contract, about three years, before you get it.”
Ripa went on to co-star with Faith Ford in the sitcom “Hope & Faith” when she left “AMC” in 2002 and to be a morning talk-show host alongside Regis Philbin, but says that her days on the soap prepared her for everything.
“On ‘Hope & Faith,’ I had my lines memorized at the table read,” she says. “And they would say, ‘Please stop memorizing the script because we’re going to rewrite.’
“When you work on a soap, you work through so many crazy scenarios you develop a sense of humor.”
Like Ripa, Vanessa Marcil — who played Brenda Barrett from 1992-98 on “General Hospital” — had only done a few things, plays mostly, before she audtioned.
Casting director Mark Teschner, who sees between 200 and 300 actors for each soap role, hired Marcil “despite her lack of credits,” he says. “I knew . . . she had the potential to really turn this into something.”
Marcil remembers her co-star, Maurice Benard, who plays Sonny Corinthos, did not feel the same way at first.
“Maurice Benard said, ‘You’re cute, but you suck. What do want? Do you want to get a storyline? If you want that, you’re going to have to start working hard,’ ” he told her.
“He taught me how to act.”
Eventually, she learned that “there is actual craft” to acting on a soap and “if you learn it, you can go anywhere.”
“It took a good year for me to become even watchable.”
Both Marcil — who went on to co-star in the movie “The Rock” and the NBC series “Las Vegas” — and Ripa mourn for young stars who won’t have the advantages they got from starting in the soaps.
“I’m thrilled that ‘All My Children’ was my first acting gig,” says Ripa. “I don’t know that I would have been able to go in reverse.”
“Marcil adds that it is “especially heartbreaking” that soaps are in such sad shape.
“Everyone I know has some connection to daytime television,” she says.
“I’ll be devastated if it all goes away.”
Teschner, who is celebrating his 21st year with “GH,” says the death of soaps like “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns,” makes it “ultra-competitive” for aspiring actors to land a role.
“The bar is very high on daytime [now],” he says. “There’s more pressure for the actor to bring it. It’s a very short learning curve.”