It irritates me so much the way people talk about soaps because it is far more difficult working on a soap than it is on a big studio film.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Soaps are a great springboard for any actor but if you want to be taken seriously, you have to be careful.
The general view is that actors start on soaps and then maybe graduate to prime-time television or film; normally you don't see a film actor going to do a soap.
That's the problem with soaps, of course. The stories never end. They can go on and on and on.
I can't imagine soaps will ever stop, because people will always watch as long as they have great stories and characters. But the soaps will have to keep evolving, won't they?
Nothing is as hard as working on a British soap in this industry.
For the most part, I don't like people who soapbox.
I like soap opera acting. If it's done really well, there's nothing better. It's old school. It's like what those melodramas in the '30s and '40s were like.
I'll never look down on and I love running into actors who say 'Oh yeah, I did a soap.' I say 'Tell me which one!' It's like being a member of a secret society.
Soaps are great. You learn to work very fast - some say superficially, but that's not really true. You do some very serious character work. I've never had any feelings about a stigma attached to it, and nowadays there seems to be less snobbery about what you do. More and more big names are doing TV and commercials and voiceovers.
It's a great counter to doing the soap because it's a comedy. It's real physical comedy.