Though best known for one particular role on Days of our Lives — owing to either the popularity or notoriety of the character or by virtue of longevity — these actors actually played another part on the venerable serial.
Days of Our Lives: Double Time
And despite sharing the same faces, and maybe a personality trait or two, these DAYS doppelgangers shared no blood ties.
John Aniston
His Victor Kiriakis has been snarking and scheming on-screen since 1985, but Aniston first appeared on DAYS back in 1969.
Remembers Aniston to Glamour, “When the part of Doug Williams came up, I auditioned…about two weeks later they called me and said they had another part they would like me to do…” That part? Eric Richards.
“I was the prison doctor that treated Bill Horton very badly,” added Aniston. “I came from Hell’s Kitchen in New York and clawed my way through medical school, while he came from a family that handed everything to him on a silver platter…The audience hated me. One woman attacked me in a supermarket one day. She said, ‘What are you doing?! Bill Horton is a wonderful man! He has never hurt anybody in his life!'”
Andrea Hall
Deidre Hall’s real-life twin sister, Andrea Hall, joined the cast of Days of our Lives in 1977. Unsurprisingly, she played Marlena Evans’s twin, Samantha. Covetous Sam briefly usurped Marlena’s positions as beloved Salemite, psychiatrist at Salem University Hospital, and girlfriend to Don Craig before being caught out.
Hall had return engagements in 1979, 1980, and 1982, with Sam eventually meeting her end at the hands of The Salem Strangler. When the actress reappeared on the DAYS scene in 2000, it was as Hattie Adams, a down on her luck waitress who had a bone to pick with Marlena.
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Wayne Northrop
Northrop was top cop Roman Brady from 1981-1984 and then again from 1991-1994, so it probably came as some surprise when he returned to Days of our Lives in the personage of Alex North, Marlena’s abusive ex-husband.
Josh Taylor
For 10 years, Taylor toiled as jack-of-all-trades Chris Kositchek. Then, a full decade later, he succeeded Northrop as Roman Brady.
Renée Jones
Jones made her Days of our Lives debut in 1982, and for a year, she recurred as SPD secretary Nikki Wade. The gorgeous actress made a comeback in 1993, this time as police officer Lexie Brooks, the future wife of James Reynolds’s Abe Carver.
Judith Chapman
As man-hungry Anjelica Deveraux, Chapman made Justin Kiriakis’s (Wally Kurth) life a misery. In fact, the only decent thing she ever did was hand over the child the two of them had conceived…and that was done amidst much protest. Years later, Chapman was back on DAYS, but this time in the guise of Diana Cooper (née Colville) – and misery did she make of John Black’s (Drake Hogestyn) life.
Judi Evans
Evans’s first Days of our Lives alter-ego was poor put-upon Adrienne Johnson. Her second was buxom, bawdy, Bonnie Lockhart.
Marie Wilson
Wilson didn’t make as much of an impact her first time around on DAYS, but the opposite was true of her second stint. During that time, she played Maggie Horton Kiriakis’s (Suzanne Rogers) heretofore unknown offspring, Summer Townsend.
Days of our Lives (DOOL) airs weekdays on NBC. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Salem, check out all the latest that’s been posted on DAYS spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.
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