Which Soap Had The Worst Actors/Actresses?

[Corkys-Place]

I always found the acting on the now defunct "Passions" to be rather questionable.

[tlc38tlc38]

Originally Posted by Corkys-Place

I always found the acting on the now defunct "Passions" to be rather questionable.

Why does everyone always pick on "Passions"? I always thought they did a great job. The whole point of this soap was to be a parody of soap operas...over dramatized, over acted scenes...they accomplished what they set out to do.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by 80sTrivia

Most soaps had good, quality actors, particularly in the early days of the medium. Many of the actors on the soaps based in New York also worked on the stage, often at the same time. This helped create some amazing actors, and the long list of superstars that started their careers on the soaps is well documented. (Which makes me sad now, to think no soaps are filmed in New York City anymore...)

As the years went on, the soaps had to bring in the ratings and often pandered to the teen market, and many hired less-than-stellar performers, based more on their looks than their talent.

That being said, I would say most of the soaps had the longtime cast members with the acting chops to make up the difference. I would have to select Passions as the soap with the worst acting, however. Of course, it probably didn't help that the show had horrible writers churning out ever-more-ridiculous story lines that wouldn't make it into a comic book! Sunset Beach went along the same lines, and was also targeted at a younger audience, who wouldn't necessarily appreciate actors with Shakespearean training!

As for Dark Shadows, many of the earlier episodes were done live, and so things went wrong, cameras crept into view, actors would trip on stage or forget their lines from time to time. Still, at least it had quality writing and was a truly innovative show for its time. I don't imagine shows like True Blood or the Vampire Diaries would be popular if it weren't for the original Gothic soap opera and the eternal Barnabas Collins!

As the soaps continue to diminish, I imagine the quality will also keep going downward. Many of the truly talented soap actors still alive have gone into early retirement, or work predominantly on the stage or do episodic television. I imagine in another few years, they won't even be handing out Emmy Awards for Outstanding Acting in a Daytime Drama, and that will be the end of an era...

I heard that the problem with soap opera actors is that because of the quick production turn around, actors develop bad habits. And the longer you have a bad habit such as playing over the top emotions 250 episodes a year, the harder it is to break. Soaps really do have their own approach, rhythms, etc. And actors from soaps can often learn a style of acting that doesn't always translate well to other mediums like nighttime TV or film.

To be more specific, since they probably don't have the time, soap actors wouldn't be able to break down the beats of a scene and make strong, at times surprising or interesting choices. So they tend to make cliched, easy (anger is an easy choice for most) choices and run through a lot of beats. There's also not much time to do interior work to make authentic (meaning realistic) emotional/psychological choices and thus soap actors instead, tend to come across as phony/over the top.

Simply put, there's an assumption that a daytime soap opera actor would be too hammy/over the top or too formulaic and not being in the moment since they are machines that grind out a lot of story.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by Fontaine

From what I've seen on other sites, the worst actors on soaps are considered to be Drake Hogestyn from DAYS and Ronn Moss from B&B. I don't know who is considered the worst actresses. I know Charity Rahmer, but she really wasn't on long enough.

One argument that I read though is that Drake Hogestyn and Ronn Moss are when you get right down to it, two examples of actors who aren't the best at the work, but who do/did an amazing job of embodying the character in such as way that everything they did was just believable and worked.

Drake Hogestyn has that macho acting style that you could say, is so over the top that it manages to be both comical and sexy. In the case of Ronn Moss, you can argue that as laughable his stilted and wooden delivery could be, it kind of went along with his character's cocky and egotistical persona.