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Anthony Geary, the most popular star in soap opera history, is paying the price of having done his job TOO well.
He is and always will be linked with Luke Spencer, the "General Hospital" character he's played on and off for 18 years. Geary has been both beneficiary and victim of his association with Luke, one of televisions's most charismatic characters. This alliance has been a double- edged sword, making him a superstar while sumultaneously hobbling his career.
Nobody is more aware of this than Tony Geary, who turns 50 this week. He's grateful to Luke, and if he ever harbored resentment toward the character he plays to perfection, he's long past it. "I'm a big fish in a little pond," he says, "and after years of struggling to find bigger ponds, I'm now happy with what I'm doing where I am. I swim this pond pertty well."
Geary, wearing a black shirt, trousers and jacket, strolls into the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel for lunch, comanding the attention of other diners. Not necessarily because they recognize him. Rather it's his carriage and demeanor.
Not to say he strides into the restaurant expecting to be lionized while making a Hollywood-style entrance. To the contrary, it's a graceful, masculine approach to his table without a glance at anyone. Indeed, he may not have been recognized at all with his new, short-cropped sandy hair, and he appears taller than he does on TV.
Geary seldom grants interviews. He's been wary of the media since 1980, when the Luke and Laura romance ignited a national frenzy, culminating in mass lunacy when the couple married on GH, attracting the largest daytime audiendce in network history. Geary and Genie Francis, who plays Laura, were so vociferously besieged by the media that they soon came to resent the intrusions into their lives.
"I was young and raw and had no savvy about the press," Geary says. "I was exploited beyond belief. And I participated in my own exploitation to the point where it became very disturbing to me. But I suvived that. Now I pick and choose when I agree to do interviews. And, well, now it's Emmy time. Genie and I have been nomianted and so has Jonathan Jackson, who plays our son.
"I've been nominated four times for the Best Actor Emmy and won it 15 years ago," he adds. "I'd like to get nominated every 15 years. It's an honor and I like to be appreciated by my peers.
"Actually, I care about anti-recognition. I do my best to stay out of the limelight. One of my favorite places is a small city in Europe where I have an apartment. The people there have no sense of celebrity. They don't know me and they don't care. I've never become accustomed to fame and notoriety. It's an intrusion and it always scares me," he says.
Geary's attitude may stern from his childhood; he is the son of Latter Day Saints, and grew up in a small town in Utah. His Mormon background is reflected in his flawless manners, a devotion to truth and unflinching principles.
Shortly after the Luke and Laura weedding, both Geary and Francis left the show, going their separate ways to explore career options. But none was as successful for them as GH.
Geary's return to GH six years ago saw a transformation in the man and the actor. Both had gained integrity and self-assurance, adding sex appeal and strength to Luke. Since the writing hasn't changed that much, Geary's personal growth is the substance of the subtle, but transcendent, performance.
"I've always been an actor, never expected to do anything else," says Geary. "I certainly didn't expect to have this kind of career [soaps] when i started on "General Hospital". I'd worked professionally for eight years, including two other soaps -- six months on "The Young and the Restless" and two years on "Bright Promise" -- and about 540 guest shots on episodic shows."
Geary grins, thinking about his early struggles and grows serious, when asked if he'd ever dreamed of becoming an icon. "I suppose i became a mini-icon with Luke," he responds, "a barracuda in this little pond. I never anticipated such a thing. It still surprises me, and for a long time I was disturbed by it. The more successful one becomes on a soap, the less opportunity one has to become anything else. I guess I'm the best example of that.
When I left the show for eight years in 1983, I went out hungry to do films and did 13 movies in five years, B pictures. They caught up with me on late-night tv. Sometimes when I travel to Europe, I see one of them dubbed in Italian. By the time I returned to "General Hospital", I'd worked all that out. I was quite content. This IS my career.
"I still love the stage, and I'm always looking for a play. The series is good about that. Last summer, they wrote me into the show very lightly so I could do a one-man show, "Human Scratchings", at the Court Theater in Los Angeles. We won some awards. It was a very good experience. But I'm not looking for movies or other TV roles. This is my fulltime job and I like it. I like doing Luke Spencer."
Geary agrees to an analogy between himself and a piano virtuoso who excells at playing Rachmaninoff, but longs to do Mozart and Back. Yet, people insist he stick to Rachmaninoff because he does it so well.
"The better you get, the more you restrict yourself," he says with a grin. "It frustrated me when I was younger. I didn't have much respect for what I did on a soap. I was always looking for career respect. I know better now. In fact, I have more onscreen time than John Wayne, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford -- you name them -- put together. I'm acting and people believe Luke Spencer. That's what I'm supposed to do -- convince them.
"It's a very specific talent. I know fine actors who couldn't do what I do because it is too fast. By the same token, my instrument is honed to Rachmaninoff, and to stretch out to play Leonard Bernstein would give me a lot of gratification. But sometimes I don't play Bernstein as well. I know this medium. It's what I do and I'm quite content with it. [Luke] has afforded me a life elsewhere.
"I had my life and my career so confused when I was in my 20s and early 30s, I thought if I weren't making films or on Broadway, I wasn't an actor. My life became secondary to my role. I became more Luke than Tony. It got very confusing. When "General Hospital" was on the cover of "Newsweek" as TV's hottest show and the media was covering our every move, it was a heady time.
"It was a lot to survive," he adds. "I was a flash in the pan.
"You know, I don't have traditional matinee idol looks, for God's sake. My character isn't a traditional leading man. If anything, he's an antihero.
"He actually raped Laura, to whom he's now married. It was a groundbreaking situation for daytime drama. It got a lot of attention, although it was date rape, not a vicious criminal act.
"I believe Luke's remorse and his faithful love and respect for Laura and their children, his turnaround, have made him popular with the audience."
All the same, viewers are fascinated with Luke's dark side. He has shadowwy connections with the underworld. There's a vague aura of lurking danger about the character, masked by his love and devotion to Laura. The surface good guy is haunted by the possibility of a revelation of the bad guy Luke once was. This dichotomy is resourcefully present in Geary's performance, a muted sense of explosive energy.
Taking nothing away from Geary as an actor, that dichotomy also is part of his own character. He exudes ޭenormaous strength, physically and intellectually. Geary is self-assured and confident without being cocky. Nothing in his manner suggest theatricality. He neither looks nor behaves like an actor.
These masculine traits, plus a touch of the pirate in his soul, appeal to women. Yet he's been a lifelong bachelor and indicates that he'll remain that way as he approaches his middle years.
Reminded that the Hollywood divorce rate has left many a successful actor living in genteel poverty, Geary says, "Ah, there it is. Having no children or exwives to support, I'm able to lavish my money and attention on myself, which is one of the reasons you find me as happy and content as I am today."
Returning to his career, he admits, "Now I prefer longevity on a soap as compared to a hit-or-miss career all over the planet in films and what not. To be honest, I don't enjoy acting as much as I used to. So it's nice to have a job where I know precisely what is expected of me, how to do it and I'm well paid for it.
"It's like being a long-distance runner. You go through phases where you think you may pass out or your heart might burst, but you keep going until you get to a place where the endorphins are pumping and you don't even see the finish line anymore. You just keep running.
"Fortunately, Luke is an idiosyncratic character. I battle to hold onshades of gray in him. On soaps, we tend to be black or white. Luke has always fascinated me. I've reached a place with Executive Producer Wendy Riche that is beneficial to both of us.
"When I left the show, I was totally burned out. I had to leave. I know it's an odd thing for an actor to leave a show and return eight years later. When I returned to the series, I said I didn't want to play Luke. So they let me play Bill, his cousin. The audience didn't respond to Bill or the storylines. So they brought back Luke and it's worked out all around. Luke was no longer a low man on the Mafia totem pole. He's now a club owner with some mob connections in the background.
"At heart, Luke is much more a D'Artagnan (the fourth Musketeer) than a contemporary man. Someone asked me if I thought Luke could be relevant to the 21st century. I said he could be as relevant in the 21st as he would have been in the 17th. He's a romanticist, a cavalier of the classic order."
Having said he no longer seeks feature film assignments, Geary admits if an outstanding role came his way, he'd seize it.
"Of course I would if I could return to GH. One of the wonderful things expecially with ABC 15 years ago was that Genie and I can do other things and they won't kill of the characters. Luke and Laura are sort of permanent staples of American daytime," he points out. "How bad can that be?"
Further, Geary knows few if any actors could play Luke Spencer as well as he does. "I willingly accept the responsibility for public acceptance of Luke. But I think any actor could do it if he could stand th rigorous schedule -- and because it is a career ender, isn't it? I mean, if you have your sights on the bigger pool, you don't want to become known for swimming in this one. It's unfortuante but that's the reality that I and others have experienced.
"I'm proud to say I've come to accept that as part of the package, the good with the bad. Being a survivor, I do believe the day will come that I will be such an old, well-known actor that things could still turn around. But I don't need that anymore. What I need is time to be in another place and pick up where I was before I was known 20 years ago.
"I have a great job and I like what I'm doing. Over a 13-week cycle, I work three days a week, and I keep working on ways to bring more reality to Luke.
"It's not easy for the writers with 30 major characters. It's like running in front of a locomotive all the time trying to keep track of the storylines. I realize the biggest part of my job is keeping the character on track, making sure he hasn't violated his history. I must be attentive to what he might do and say because the audience has watched him these 20 years and they know him. They often know more than the new writers who join the show.
"I don't believe in catering to the audience by having Luke do things they'd like to see him do. I like to keep him provocative and challenge viewers instead of consoling them. I don't want Luke to be a big, comfortable sofa of a characer. That's the tendency after many years -- to make characters like Luke and Laura these wonderful neighbors of yours. There's no drama in that.
"Genie and I battle forcefully to keep the edges on our characters. One of the reasons for our longevity is the idiosyncratic approach to playing them. When we change writers we help steer, cajole, coerce and do all we can to keep the chaaracters on track."
Mention of Francis brings a tender smile to Geary. His fondness for his co-star and onscreen wife is immediately apparent.
"She's a wonderful woman and we're close friends even though she's half my age," he says. "She was only 14 when we began working together about 19 years ago. We quickly learned to trust each other. There's no one I'd rather work with. Nothing is more important to two actors than trust. You can open up to them and hope the camera catches it. Even with script problems or whatever the problems are, it's really between two people.
"We can hang onto each other's glances and unspoken moments, saying more with our looks and silent language than with pages and pages of dialogue. With chemistry like that, you feed off each other. Genie is an extraordinary woman and actress. And she's gorgeous. We've come to respect each other's boundaries when we're working. The love scenes were playful when we first played them, but we learned that was uncomfortable and we don't do that anymore.
"I've spent a great deal of time with her and her child -- she's soon going to have another -- and her wonderful actor-director husband Jonathan Frakes. When I call them at home and Jonathan answers the phone, he calls, 'Honey, it's your other husband!'
"Otherwise, I don't hang out much with people from the show. Friendship to me is to be with somebody without a lot of editting, which I have with many people.
"When the infamous rape occurred, Genie was 16 or 17. They'd never do that scene today because it is much too controversial. The audience responded not only to her pain but to Luke's. So we had two people victimized by one person'ts passion and obsession. That story wouldn't be done today. Those roots wre so politically incorrect, I try to hang onto them in these politically correct times. It's difficult in drama to be politically correct because conflict is the basis of drama," he adds. "We all have conflicts. What would life be without them, without insults and unacceptable behavior? Hurt feelings are part of everyone's life.
"The show is like doing a play. But you're always in Act II. Act III, the resolution, is always somewhere ahead in the distance,. If you resolve one story, it usually catapults you into another. Act I, the characters' pasts, are in Act II as well. It's like living in Act II, awaiting an intermission. Most actors go crazy trying to adjust to that. You can never be sure what the solution will be or if there will be one.
"I was a paraplegic for nine months -- there I go, confusing myself with Luke -- and the writers had him get well. The audience is endlessly forgiving with those kinds of thinks. But if you violate character, that's different. That's like screwing with their friends -- they won't stand for that.
"These shows are popular because in the real world, there is so little continuity. The appeal is that these people will be there again tomorrow. When you kill off a character, or a cast regular passes away like John Beradino (Dr. Steve Hardy) did last year, it's traumatic to the audience.
"We try to give Luke some volatility, which is attractive at 30, but it can be annoying at 50. The challenge is making the volatilty meaningful. You still go over the cliff, but now it's an internal cliff.
"To be honest, I can't think of a character other than Luke that I could play every day. He's an anarchist. I like the fact he is a one-woman man. He may flirt shamelessly, but he's never be unfaithful to Laura. I'd never want him to be. In a way, it is more difficult to keep a marriage alive on a soap opera than in real life. As soon as a soap couple is happy together, it's over. But we've kept the conficts alive. Laura is an angel to Luke, the greatest thing that ever happened to him. Luke couldn't be better."
It was unnecessary to ask whether Geary was speaking for Luke -- or himself.