Mark Collier: From Daytime to Primetime and Beyond

Los Angeles -- Every actor who has ever appeared on a soap opera has stories to tell about being mistaken by fans on the street for the character he or she played on the show. That includes Mark Collier, the actor who recently concluded a five-year run on As the World Turns.

When I arrived at Du-Par's restaurant in Studio City for a recent breakfast with Mark, I found him seated in the waiting area just inside the front door.

"Hi, Mike. I'm Ed," I said.

"Hi, Ed. I'm Mark," Mike replied.

I had, of course, confused Mark Collier with Mike Kasnoff, his character on the long-running CBS soap.

Once we were seated, Mark and I set about discussing his run on ATWT and life after soaps. Mark in December chose to leave the New York City-based drama when his contract was up for renewal and move to Los Angeles to hit the audition circuit.

"I wanted to do other things, try other things out," Mark recalled. "It was the perfect time to move on. It was my decision to leave."

On the show, Mike left the town of Oakdale when Mark left New York, leaving the door open for Mike to return to the canvas and, presumably, Mark to return to the role. Soap acting, Mark said, is "a great job," one that gives actors a chance to grow and earn a nice living at the same time. "You make decent money. You get to work a lot, which to me was the best part. I love being at work."

As for his move west, Mark explained, "I wanted to see what was out here. I wanted to play a different character. Mike Kasnoff is very much a good guy. I've been very fortunate since I got to Los Angeles because I've been able to audition for deeper, darker characters. That excites me wherever I can find those characters, whether it's in primetime or film."

So what is it like to be out on the audition circuit competing with other actors for roles after five years with a steady gig? Not a problem, said Mark, except for one thing. "The most challenging part to me is having more idle time. When you're shooting at least 10-12 pages a day on a show, and then you're not, that can be a little bit strange. That's been the biggest adjustment."

Mark Collier

Despite the recent prime time successes of All My Children alumnus Josh Duhamel (Las Vegas), The Young and the Restless alumna Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives) and General Hospital alumni Vanessa Marcil (Las Vegas) and Amber Tamblyn (Joan of Arcadia), the many former soap actors looking for primetime and film work in Hollywood will tell you that agents, casting directors and studio executives are generally unaware of the work they have done in daytime, no matter how acclaimed. Mark said he has noticed this, as well.

"Casting people don't generally bring it up," he noted. "They may read about it and say, 'Tell me about your time on the show,' or 'What character were you playing?'" Mark said he can understand their position, "because there are a lot of soaps out there," too many, perhaps, for casting people to be expected to watch. "I'm sure they're watching a lot of prime time as it is," he offered.

Still, Mark recalled that, "back in the '80s people who came out of soaps were going into films. Daytime people were very popular. Then there was a big drop. You didn't see very many daytime people going into prime time or film. Now I think there's another upswing. People are starting to look at soaps again. Part of it, from what I understand, is that some of the soaps are not quite as super-melodramatic as they used to be. Some of the better soaps are getting a little smaller in a sense. They're not so over-the-top." That's a good shift for actors, Mark asserted, because casting people "can see someone doing a scene on a soap and [determine if] that person is a good actor" without any distractions.

Mark grew up in Ocala, Florida, and moved to Los Angeles about ten years ago to pursue acting. Four years of "having a few different jobs to pay the bills, going to class and studying" followed, along with auditions and work with a local theater company before ATWT came his way in 2002. The role of Mike was his first big acting job.

"I screen tested a year before for a different role on ATWT," Mark explained. Another actor landed that part, "but a year later Mike came up and I went to screen test for it. I got the call a couple days later that I had the job. I had about five days to move all of my things to New York."

"I realized from the beginning how fortunate I was getting a job on As the World Turns," Mark continued. "I saw incredibly talented people working in class and at the theater company, but for whatever reason they didn't go on. There are a lot of very talented people out here who for whatever reason aren't getting to a certain level of work. It keeps you humble when you see that. It's kept me humble."

The fast, non-stop pace of soap opera production proves overwhelming for many actors when they first come on board a show. "For some reason I never got super overwhelmed by it," Mark recalled. Looking through the first five scripts, "There was that initial moment when I was shocked at the amount of dialogue," he admitted. "But once I got there and started studying it for some reason it just came to me much easier than I thought it was going to." He said he had a lot of time to study his lines, because he "didn't know anyone" in New York. "I wasn't out seeing buddies or friends. As soon as I left the set I was back home learning lines, getting up and doing the same thing. I knew it was going to be that way for a while until I learned how to memorize better and break down the scenes faster."

A greater early challenge, perhaps, was the response by passionate, long-time ATWT fans to a new actor playing a role that had been played many years earlier by someone else. "Soap fans are very loyal to who played what character, especially if they liked him," Mark explained. "[Shawn Christian, the actor who previously played Mike], was a fan favorite, so even seven or eight years later there were people who were upset about me. The first weekend there was a charity softball game and people were giving me a hard time. 'Okay, I'll try to like you, but I liked [Shawn] a lot!' When you're on every day, people get used to you."

Another challenge came midway through Mark's time on the show when he appeared in the first-ever nude scene in the fifty-year history of ATWT. [That steamy January 2004 sequence can be found on YouTube.]

"It was a shot of my backside," Mark recalled. "That had been done on daytime television, but it had never been done on our show. Being the second oldest [scripted] show on television [after Guiding Light], it was a big thing -- especially for a very conservative show like As the World Turns.

"It was Mike and [his then-girlfriend] Katie in the shower, a very romantic scene," Mark continued. "They were in the shower for a couple minutes. She wrote 'I Love You' in the steam on the door. It was shot through beveled glass, mostly from [my waist] up.

"People were asking me about it, but I hadn't been in the editing room. You shoot one thing and the editors and censors can do something completely different. I was prepared for the worst. I told my family and everything. But when I saw it I thought, that's it? Why is everyone saying so much about it? It was really nothing."

Mark agreed with my assertion that the scene probably wouldn't have run had it been scheduled a week or so later than it was -- because it was telecast only a few days before Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during the infamous Super Bowl XXXVIII half-time show. Tellingly, neither CBS nor Procter & Gamble, the company that produces ATWT, received any complaints about the sensuality or nudity in Mark's scene when it aired. But CBS would have certainly deleted it in the wake of Jackson's exposure and the fear of FCC fines that followed. After a prolonged period of prudence, soap operas are once again filled with exposed flesh and sizzling sex scenes -- but Mark remains the last actor to have bared so much in the daypart.

What's it like filming a sex scene? "Obviously there's a little bit of awkwardness to it," Mark said. "They usually clear the set, mostly for the girl because it's primarily guys on the crew." When he won the role of Mike, he recalled, "I had never watched As the World Turns. I didn't know what the writing was like, but I'm not naïve. I knew they weren't going to have me in a parka every day. I knew there would be sex scenes. That's part of daytime. I understand that."

As for that particular shower scene, Mark said it was made easier by the fact that "Terri [Colombino, the actress who plays Katie] and I had worked together for a while and knew each other. We had done sex scenes before."

Nevertheless, "It can get a little awkward walking around a studio in a robe knowing that you're about to take it off and step into a shower," Mark laughed. "There are times when you think, 'Wow, if my friends could see me now.'"