The night Robert S. Woods came home from Vietnam in 1971 after a 15-month tour of duty as a Green Beret, his family took him to his favorite Mexican restaurant, a place he’d often thought of while he was away. The food came...and for no clear reason, he couldn’t eat.
“Then I had to drive {my then-girlfriend} Loyita home,” Woods recalls, “and I wasn’t used to cars anymore. I was used to driving jeeps on a dirt road. So we got on the freeway. The speed limit was 65. Everyone was doing 75, they were zooming past us and I said, ‘Why is everybody in such a hurry?’ And Loyita said, ‘Because you’re only driving 45.’”
To say that Vietnam affected the actor’s perception of just about everything in life back then would be hopelessly inadequate. Even now, a quarter-century later, he thinks about the war several times a day, and talks about it in the present tense, as if it were still going on.
“It’s just a very extreme situation,” Woods sighs. “That’s what it basically comes down to. You find yourself all packed up to live outside, you’re armed to the teeth, backpacking and hunting. And what you’re hunting for is people, and they are hunting for you, too. And if you catch them and have the opportunity, you're going to kill them. It's just very, very intense."
Though it must have seemed to many that, upon his return, Woods picked up right where he left off– back to California State College in Long Beach, back to Loyita, back to his weekend job operating rides at Disneyland–nothing was really the same. Friends who had gotten braces or gotten married to avoid the draft felt weird around him, He felt weird around them. The transition to civilian life was awkward, and brought big changes.
For one thing, Woods quit studying political science and took up radio and television production. For another, he and Loyita got more serious – and tied the knot in 1973, in the last semester of his senior year. And – most importantly, at least to fans of his Bo Buchanan on OLTL – he decided to become an actor.
"I had done plays in college and loved it, and Disneyland was really an acting class, too, because you always had to come up with weird jokes to make people laugh," he remembers. "And Loyita [who is also an actor] found an acting workshop in Variety that I could go to on the G.I. Bill. And I said, 'Why not?'"
Why not, indeed. By the time he auditioned for OLTL in 1979, Woods had already appeared in the film The China Syndrome, enjoyed a recurring role on THE WALTONS, and had done guest spots on FAMILY, NEWHART, and a bunch of other episodics. It’s so funny to think that the role I originally wanted on ONE LIFE was Richard Abbott, so I tested with Mary Gordon Murray [ex-Becky Lee]. Then, I did the Bo audition with Erika Slezak [Viki]. I still have the tape somewhere, just this skinny kid trying to be a cowboy."
Eighteen years and one Best Actor Daytime Emmy ("It's up on a glass case that has all my toy soldiers") later, Woods has clear opinions on the creative morass that has hobbled the show in the recent past. Major points of contention: The Buchanans have barely interacted with one another for years now, and Bo's role has been whittled down to the point where he's really just Nora's sidekick.
"If I wasn't married with a kid, I probably would have quit in the middle of my contract," he says. "But I've got a lot of faith in [new Head Writers] Matt and Claire Labine. They're turning things around and it's taking time, but they'll come through."
And even if they don't, family far outweighs storyline as Woods's top priority. Though he and Loyita were divorced in 1981, victims of bicoastal separation, they found their way back to each other and remarried in 1985. ("Nathan Purdee [Hank, OLTL] did that, too, so it's not that unusual.'') Soon afterward, Loyita actually played Bo's great grandmother, Blaize, during OLTL's Wild West storyline.
At the same time, they wanted to start a family, but it wasn't easy. After years of waiting, Loyita finally gave birth to twins Dylan and Tanner on November 15, 1990. The boys were born 10 weeks early; only Tanner was strong enough to make it. "At the time we named the boys, there were no Tanners,'' the actor says with a chuckle. "Now there's that wacko on ALL MY CHILDREN, and DAYS OF OUR LIVES had a Tanner, too. it annoys Loyita. She thinks she's copywritten the name and nobody else should be called Tanner, ever."
Clearly, Woods cherishes every moment of fatherhood. He and Tanner watch Jurassic Park together, plan Halloween costumes six months in advance, play with Legos. "Most of my free time involves being a dad" Woods nods. "I don't go away on weekends, I don’t go to many parties, I really just stay in New York and do things with Tanner. Because, you know, I'm going to be 50 in less than a year. Tanner's 6 now, and I'll probably only be his best buddy for another eight years, or maybe 10. After that, he'll be hanging out with his friends and he won't want to have anything to do with me. So I'm taking advantage of this time."
Besides, it was time to slow down, anyway. "It's weird ... I go out running, playing softball, and I'm not as quick as I was. I wear reading glasses now. My knees sometimes bother me. I get winded swimming. Sometimes I think I'm an old fart, and I use that as an excuse not to do something."
Such was the case when he begged out of the Daytime Emmy Awards in 1996, the year Erika Slezak took home her fifth statuette. "I wanted to be the first message on Erika's machine if she won, so I dialed her number, then hung up, so all I would have to do was push redial. Then they said her name and I left her a message while she was giving her speech."
But you know what they say about the best-laid plans. "I was actually her second message," Woods sighs. "Somebody called before me, got the wrong number and hung up." - Adam Kelly
