First let me say, I am not a soap-opera watcher; for one thing I work full-time and although I have a TV running all day in my office, it’s normally tuned to CNN or the public television station where I work, not soap operas.
Ahem. Today I turned on the TV and it was still on the network channel I had on yesterday, when I was watching “Oprah.” Gweneth Paltrow was promoting the PBS series she’s on this fall, “Spain…On the Road Again” (it’s a cooking/travel show) and, being in marketing, I tuned in to see what she said.
So anyway, I see the morning news program, and then The Young and the Restless comes on. Slightly amused, I watch a few minutes … and who before my wondering eyes should appear but Alex Keaton’s dad, Michael Gross, from the '80s staple “Family Ties.”
Now and again I’ll read about someone making a brief appearance on a soap opera, but in checking the IMDb, it appears he’s in a regular role, as Lowell ‘River’ Baldwin smirk He appears to be playing some older, sexy hippie type, which is fittingly funny considering his public-television, hippy dad to to Alex’s '80s conservative teen in “Family Ties.”
I’d tune in to see a few episodes of that. He was a super creepy villain in a Law & Order (possible special victims, or CI)
Ted Shackleford (late of Dallas, and Knots Landing) has been on it for a while. Okay, from nighttime soaps to daytime soaps isn’t as big a leap as sitcom to soaps. Lorenzo Lamas is (was?) on Bold & Beautiful.
Eddie Mecca (Carmine “The Big Ragu” Ragusso, from Laverne & Shirley) having a role on Guiding light is possibly more similar.
From interviews I’ve heard, soaps aren’t a bad place for actors to land. The work is steady and interesting, and while you don’t become a household name (with a few *Susan Lucci *exceptions) you earn respectable money. I believe a lot of actors who work on soaps shot in NY also work in theatre. I know a lot of people who show up on the aforementioned L&O also work in soaps.
Oh Jim … if it’s true great minds think alike, I don’t mind at all! (Except, I must admit, that as a good little Bleeding Heart Liberal, I chafed that so many of my contemporaries were going all Reagan Republican.)
Isn’t that a step down, appearing on a soap from a prime time show? You hear about people who got their start on soaps (Janine Turner, Eva Longoria) but I would think going the other way is a bit more demeaning.
Michael Gross came into my mother’s workplace a few times, when she worked at the New Mexico Highway Department. At the time, she was working on a railroad crossing safety campaign, and apparently, he has a hobby-level interest in trains.
