Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I started working in front of the camera for the first time when I was 15 years old. I joined a soap opera. We filmed in Brooklyn, and I would skip class to shoot my scenes.
I started out in theater, and then I got a job on a soap in New York. With a soap opera, its every day, all year long - there's no downtime, and you're shooting a show a day.
Every job you have, there are days that are more difficult than others. I worked on a daytime soap opera, where the volume at which you're producing this medium is incredible.
A show like Knots or any other show that can be called a soap opera does terribly in syndication because if you're a viewer and you miss a week you don't know what's going on.
I was one of the lucky people who found what I loved at a really young age. When I was 16, I got my first job in a Portuguese soap opera, and I realized how much I really loved it.
There's no better training than working on a soap opera because of the amount of hours, the amount of pages you do a day are unbelievable. It's the best training I had in terms of discipline.
I think what we've been able to do with 'Longmire' is balance this procedural with a bit of a soap opera, and it's a character study of this character, Walt Longmire, and the people around him.
I was playing this role on 'Ugly Betty,' the sweetest, nicest guy. He was a fun character to play, but I was in a Latin soap opera - where are you gonna go with a nice guy in a Latin soap opera?
The first job where I actually made money was on 'Guiding Light,' the soap opera. And I played a maid. My name was Ginger, and I had a Brooklyn accent - a really bad one, if I remember correctly.
I just figured, 'I don't want to go to university anymore,' so I went to Stockholm. I went into this teaching school and after one year I got a part in a soap opera in Stockholm. It's called 'Rederiet.'
In the case of 'The Housewives,' I call the 'Housewives' sociology of the rich. I think it's just fun to watch. It's guilt-free gossiping that you can have. It's like the modern-day soap opera, in my mind.
'Star Wars' is a grand soap opera, and 'Star Trek' is about technology, they tried to explain the reality of it, as far-fetched as it might be. And that's why I've always liked the science behind the fiction.
Every life of a character is within a context. If I write detached from a social and political background, my story looks like a soap opera where everybody is indoors, not working and living off their emotions.
In a movie, you work three months to tell a story that happens in two hours. In a Mexican soap opera, you work one day to make a story that's an hour and a half. So you can see the difference in the quality of the project.
Before, there were only four pay per views throughout the whole year. Guys who were doing soap opera storylines could build them up week after week. We had longevity, and that is one of the main reasons why people remember.
It was the late '70s when my parents met. My dad was a lighting director for a soap opera, and my mom was a temp at the studio. They moved into a house in The Valley in L.A., to a neighborhood that was leafy and affordable.
I started a novel in the back of a notebook, and it was great because it looked like I was taking notes. And I just, I kept it up, it was sort of fantasy, it was part soap opera. It was utterly dreadful, but that's how I got hooked.
I have the greatest fans. I have fans that come from soap opera world. I have fans that come from superhero world, which are a whole different section of fans. They're so cool. When people are fanatical about something, it's contagious.
The soap opera was so long ago - the thing about soap operas, and there's something to be said for doing it, but you do a script a day. I don't want to say it's a training ground; it really isn't, but what it does teach you is discipline.
Because we're in a small town and somewhat isolated from the fast lane of high tech, we've been able to grow and concentrate on our work instead of being distracted by the competition and getting caught up in the soap opera of Silicon Valley.
Soap opera seems to be a dirty word, but actually they are the most popular shows we have. People want to know what happens next, people hate the villains and love the lovers. It's good, fun TV. But I wouldn't call 'Downton' a soap opera as such.
When something like that happens, people want to try to find some dirt and make it more of a soap opera. But I think we both walked away with the door still open, if we want to do something together again. So yeah, I would call it a friendly break-up.
Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.
Burton Cummings joining the Guess Who in January 1966 changed my life forever. It's been a rocky affiliation, no doubt. One journalist once described our relationship as the longest running soap opera in Canadian history. That may be a bit oversimplified.
I think one of the great strengths of 'The Flash' is just how close everyone is on the show. They tend not to have these raging conflicts, like what we keep giving everybody on 'Arrow.' That show is more of a soap opera, and I don't say that derogatorily.
'Friends' played in this territory of being funny, and then also just grabbing your heart. And not afraid of that. It was a comedic soap opera. Not being afraid to have an audience feel something, laugh and cry, was quite extraordinary and quite wonderful.
I have also just finished three weeks on a soap opera in England. The soap opera is a rather famous one called Crossroads. It was first on television 25 years ago, and it has recently been brought back. I play the part of a businessman called David Wheeler.
Dumb luck brought on the move from business to acting. I had moved to New York when I was 23, in the year 2000. On a lark, I went to audition for a soap opera. I thought, 'Hey, this will be a really fun story to tell my grandkids one day, that I auditioned for a soap!'
The thing is I really struggle with commitments, so committing myself to six months to a year in a soap opera... I don't think it would suit my lifestyle. A few days working on a project is enough for me, and then I get bored and am ready to move on and do something else.
I never learned music. I'm quite uneducated, and usually I sat in front of the TV, with soap operas on, in England. It was very inspiring for me, I'd done all this traveling around, I came back living with my parents, everyone around me was like they're living in a soap opera.
I don't know, a lot of people go crazy about 'Breaking Bad,' but I don't like the soap opera aspect of it and only following one character. I like the context to all of it, all the pieces, like 'The Wire.' It's more about the state of things; it's not about the narrative of a person.
I'm straight and always have been. When our family gets together, we joke about it or throw our hands up in desperation because there is very little we can do. If we make a big fuss about correcting these rumors, it just creates more attention and turns the whole thing into a soap opera.
On a soap opera, you'll do an episode and a half a day, and in prime time television, you're hustling to get an episode done in eight days. That's a little bit frustrating sometimes. But there's also something exhilarating about it. It's kind of like live theater in a way, where you get one crack at it.
I remember I had a low point when I was working on a soap opera, 'General Hospital,' five years ago. It was my first real job, and it was so overwhelming. You would work five days a week and have to learn sometimes up to 30 pages of new dialogue a night, then have one take to shoot it all, the next day.
I had been nominated for an Academy Award for my performance as Sandy Lester, Dustin Hoffman's neurotic, struggling actress girlfriend, in 'Tootsie.' Under Sydney Pollack's direction, 'Tootsie' had been a runaway hit starring Dustin as an unemployed actor who pretends to be a woman in order to land a role in a soap opera.
I kind of went into soap opera with 'General Hospital' in the '80s. It's like theater because every day it's a new script, which really doesn't have a beginning, middle or end like a play or a movie script. So you have to be on your toes and bring it every day. And you have to be spontaneous, which is really how I like to work.
My mother became a casting director, and she cast me in a soap opera called 'One Life to Live.' I was, like, 8 years old, playing a kid who had hurt himself on a skateboard. I had, like, three lines. I did the lines, and everybody in the studio applauded - I was immediately hooked after that. I was like, 'This is the life for me.'
We had that horrible experience with 'Behind the Music' where they just made it all salacious. That's not about the band - that's a soap opera. If you're together with a spouse or a partner for 40 years, you're going to have arguments. But if you're with four other people, you're going have exponentially that many more things happen.
I think the joy of any soap opera is it is always there. You are allowed into this world for a little while and it's safe in that you are watching other people go through some troubles rather than yourself. It's there every night, and there is something special about that sort of terrestrial television experience for a mass audience.
Part of what motivated my writing was anger. I was angry that the daily misery of doctors, nurses, and patients was being trivialised into soap opera. We were made to feel bad because we were not perfect like our television counterparts. We were resentful that our patients did not get better as quickly as they did on telly - or at all.
I never had a burning desire to have children. But then I met Nick, and I thought, 'This is the only person I'd do this with.' So we tried, but I was a little long in the tooth for that sort of thing. But we didn't turn it into a soap opera. We tried for about a year or so, and it didn't happen and took that to mean it wasn't meant to be.
In the summer of 2007, two-time Olympic champion Guillermo Rigondeaux and his teammate, Erislandy Lara, had been arrested in Brazil after going AWOL from the Cuban team during the Pan Am Games. The defection attempt made international news and quickly became a national soap opera, regularly appearing on Cuban news and round table discussions.