Soap operas are often an overlooked genre, but earlier this week, daytime dramas were spotlighted in heart-lifting and heartbreaking ways at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
In Memoriam
The soap community has experienced many losses in the last year, and at the SAG Awards, several soap actors were honored and remembered. The show’s In Memoriam segment featured General Hospital’s Leslie Charleson, Johnny Wactor, and Nicholas Pryor; Days of Our Lives‘ Roman Bradys, Wayne Northrop and Drake Hogestyn; Another World and The Bay star John Aprea; and the great James Earl Jones, who once appeared on Guiding Light and As the World Turns.
A GH Alum is an Award Winner
General Hospital alum Demi Moore has been cleaning up this awards show season. At the SAG Awards, she earned the Actor trophy for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for The Substance. She adds the SAG Awards win to her Critic’s Choice and Golden Globes wins. Next up is this weekend’s Academy Awards. Will she take an Oscar home on Sunday?
In her speech, Moore reflected on her Screen Actors Guild membership:
As I was thinking about this night, I realized I hadn’t thought back to when I got my membership to this incredible organization. It was in 1978. I was 15, almost 16, and it changed my life because it gave me meaning, it gave me purpose, and it gave me direction because I was a kid on my own who had no blueprint for life, and I certainly knew nothing about acting, but I watched. And I listened, and I learned from all of you. You have all been my greatest teachers. And I am so, so grateful that I have continued over these so many years to be able to try and sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, but to be able to keep going.
Moore joined GH in 1981 when she was around 19 years old.
Before They Were Superstars
The SAG Awards also didn’t let the world forget that before some A-List movie and primetime TV actors were superstars, they started their careers on soap operas. The list included Alec Baldwin (The Doctors), Meg Ryan (ATWT), Bryan Cranston (Loving), Tom Selleck (The Young and the Restless), Angela Bassett (Ryan’s Hope), Ricky Martin (GH), Marisa Tomei (ATWT), Leonardo DiCaprio (Santa Barbara), Shemar Moore (Y&R), Julianne Moore (ATWT), Michael B. Jordan (All My Children), Nathan Fillion (One Life to Live), Kevin Bacon (Guiding Light), Susan Sarandon (A World Apart), Taye Diggs (GL), John Stamos (GH), Demi Moore (GH), Robin Wright (SB), Josh Duhamel (AMC), Judith Light (OLTL), David Hasselhoff (Y&R), Eva Longoria (Y&R), Ryan Philippe (OLTL), and Sarah Michelle Gellar (AMC).
In the segment, Gellar’s AMC character, Kendall Hart, told her long-lost mother, the great Erica Kane, “You got here quickly. Your broomstick must be turbo-charged.”
What did you enjoy about the 2025 SAG Awards? Let us know in the comments.
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