Fans know them as their favorite soap stars. But before they found fame and fortune on afternoon serials, those budding thespians had to get day jobs. But not all day jobs are created equally — some can be downright scary.
Which Soap Star Was It?
All of these actors are either an alum of a long-ago classic – life Ryan’s Hope – or they currently portray a character on one of the four remaining soaps – The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless. And all of them have had careers prior to becoming actors. But only one of them can fearfully recall that they worked in a business owned by Leona Helmsley, the notorious Queen of Mean.
But who can that actor be? Was it Josh Taylor (Roman Brady, DAYS), Joe Flanigan (Dr. Neil Byrne, GH), Bruce Weitz (ex-ADA Benjamin Levine, Ryan’s Hope), or Christian Le Blanc (Michael Baldwin, YR)?
Josh Taylor
Taylor is best known to daytime devotees for his two separate stints on DAYS – he spent 10 years playing entrepreneur Chris Kositchek before taking over the role of Roman Brady in 1997 – but he had quite the career before becoming an actor.
He spent a year working on the Alaskan Pipeline, then he turned his hands to managing the Westwood Village Bratskeller, a celebrity hotspot. After a year and a half there, he spent time bartending at the Riverside Lounge in Santa Barbara. However, he never worked for Leona Helmsley.
Joe Flanigan
Flanigan never intended to become an actor. Instead, he worked towards a career in publishing and he managed to get a number of his articles into such prestigious magazines as Town and Country and Interview. But he needed steady work to pay the bills.
He tried bartending but was fired after six hours. He spent two days working as a waiter before walking off the premises. A more successful stint was had when he worked as an advance man for President George H. W. Bush. Luckily, Flanigan never felt the wrath of dragon lady Helmsley.
Bruce Weitz
Weitz never toiled under the auspice of the tyrannical Helmsley, but when her life story was brought to the small screen – courtesy of the TV movie Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean – he played garment industry executive Joseph Lubin, a man that Helmsley married not once, but twice!
Christian Le Blanc
Le Blanc worked as an illustrator, a substitute kindergarten teacher, and a busboy at New York’s Helmsley Palace, a 55 story hotel owned and operated by Helmsley and her husband. Le Blanc remembers the proprietress as being, “terrifying.”
So, if you guessed that the soap star in question was Christian Le Blanc then you were absolutely correct!
