20 Huge Stars We Forgot Were on Soap Operas

These actors rose from humble beginnings on soap operas to huge careers in TV and Film.

Reaching the top of the heap as a film star is an arduous process, replete with hundreds of auditions, securing proper representation, honing of craft, and a little bit of luck. Since the advent of soap operas, which trace their origins all the way back to radio in 1930s, daytime television has provided a springboard for thousands of acting careers, many of which have reached the upper echelons of celebrity and Oscar-winning roles. Reaching back to the 1950s, some of the biggest names in Hollywood have gotten an early star on soaps, gaining the instant advantage of having their faces beamed into many a kitchen television and proving their viability on screen.

The following are 20 huge stars we forgot were on soap operas.

Shemar Moore spent many years as a soap star, playing Malcolm Winters on The Young and the Restless for over a decade, then spent the next decade on Criminal Minds, successfully transitioning to a network crime drama on CBS. Nowadays, Moore is the star of his own series, S.W.A.T., a procedural spinoff of The Shield with an enormous following. Moore has won numerous Daytime Emmys for his work on soaps, as well as several NAACP Image Awards for his work ever since, proving that even if an actor spends years in the world of daytime television, a crossover into network tv becomes a stronger possibility as their profile is raised by being in soaps.

Related: CBS Un-Cancels Season 7 of S.W.A.T. After Shemar Moore Speaks Out Against Sudden Cancelation

Nathan Fillion has become a household name thanks to more recent roles on network dramas like Castle and The Rookie, but came from humble tv origins acting on One Life to Live. Fillion played Joey Buchanan on the soap for three seasons, then got a bit part in Saving Private Ryan that elevated him to a feature-capable actor. Fillion continued regular work in TV and film, before his starring role as Richard Castle on Castle made him more than just a recognizable face. Fillion has since continued to be a huge TV star, though his career in movies never quite took off. In 2007, Fillion even made a brief comeback on the soap that helped kickstart his career.

The 2022 release of Bandit was a coming out party for Josh Duhamel, who found himself at the top of a call sheet in a hilarious feature film that finally did justice to the actor's comedic talents. Duhamel had gotten his start in TV over 20 years earlier on All My Children, playing con artist Leo du Pres. Duhamel's role on the show caused quite a stir for soap fans, who pined after the handsome but ruthless character for years before his shocking on-screen death. Despite this phenomenon, Duhamel wasn't quite a breakout star in his career, doing a ton of voice work and bit parts in big films, before more recently gaining a high enough profile to star in Bandit — and opposite Jennifer Lopez in Shotgun Wedding.

​​​​​​Sarah Michelle Gellar had a three season stint on All My Children as Kendall Hart in the early '90s — and it didn't take long for the role to springboard her into bigger movie and tv roles. Her big year was 1997, which saw the start of her starring role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as memorable roles in Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer. In the '80s, Gellar was discovered at a young age by a casting agent, ending up in many commercials and tv movies, but the exposure of being cast on a major soap helped her blossom into a more viable teen star, just as a second generation Brat Pack was coalescing in the mid-'90s, including Gellar's future husband — Freddie Prinze Jr.​

Heather Locklear was one of the few on this list who became a big star while she was still on a soap. Her eight-year run as Sammy Jo Carrington on Dynasty, was only a small part of her enormous television career, which saw concurrent roles on T.J. Hooker and The Love Boat. She became one of the '80s biggest pinups, marrying rocker Tommy Lee, and continued to be a hot commodity into the '90s, acting on Melrose Place and Spin City. Dynasty was the highest rated soap in 1985, after a slow start, thanks to the high profile of cast members Locklear and Joan Collins.

Long before Marisa Tomei became an Oscar-winning actor in the '90s, she secured two large tv roles on A Different World and As the World Turns. Tomei was somewhere between child star and proven young actor at the time, playing Marcy Thompson Cushing on ATWT and getting the necessary exposure to further her career in television. It turned out she wouldn't need tv, as being cast in My Cousin Vinny in 1992 garnered an Oscar win for the young actress, despite rumors of a Jack Palance-led conspiracy. Despite the theories about her not actually winning the award, she shined in the role and the exposure set her on a path towards working in features — and she never looked back, combining indie roles like The Slums of Beverly Hills with studio films like Chaplin to cement her legitimacy as one of the brightest young acting talents of the '90s.

Sometimes soap operas can generate a groundbreaking role, as with Billy Douglas on One Life to Live, the first openly gay teenager featured in a television series. He was played by Ryan Phillippe, who was at first unsure about taking the role as a young actor with few credits. Billy is forced to rebel against his homophobic father on the series, which saw Phillippe appear in two separate seasons. The boost in profile helped Phillippe secure dramatic roles in features, being quickly cast the following year in Crimson Tide, White Squall, and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Robin Wright got an early screen start on the soap opera Santa Barbara, being one of the four actors to play the role of Kelly Capwell. The NBC soap featured Wright from 1984 to 1988, with the actor appearing in over 500 episodes, and leading to higher profile work in features such as The Princess Bride and State of Grace. Once Wright was regularly scoring movie roles, she walked away from soaps with abandon, entering into a high profile relationship with actor Sean Penn and acting in over 60 features over the next 25 years, before her groundbreaking role in House of Cards made her one of the actors who most-benefited from the transfer to streaming.

Lindsay Lohan first gained wide notice for her role(s) in The Parent Trap, acting as twin sisters Hallie Parker and Annie James, with a poise and ability for dialect beyond her years. Turns out, Lohan was an experienced actor at that point, having already appeared on stage and television playing Alexandra "Alli" Fowler in the soap opera Another World. It was a recurring role in her second soap, proving she could act in a dramatic setting as a series regular. That led to her jump into movies a year after the role, with The Parent Trap being her first big feature. By the time she acted in Mean Girls six years later, Lohan had become a full-fledged movie star.

Related: Is Lindsay Lohan Experiencing a Career Resurgence?

James Earl Jones became one of the most recognizable voices in film after his voice work as Darth Vader in Star Wars, overcoming a speech impediment by developing his theatrical, mid-Atlantic dialogue style. This calling card was developed in his early career as a stage actor and on the soap opera As the World Turns as Dr. Jerry Turner. Jones' started with a bang, having a role in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, but he was still a working actor who had to take roles in television as the opportunities for black actors in the 60s were few and far between. This paid off mightily when he became the iconic Vader in the 1970s, but Jones was still only initially paid $7,000 for the role. After Coming to America made his face as recognizable as his voice, the actor finally reached A-List status.

Tom Selleck had a few small TV roles in the early '70s before a two-season stint on The Young and the Restless brought him to wider national attention. Selleck played Jed Andrews, husband of main character Betty Andrews, who despite seemingly being the perfect husband, was carrying on an extramarital affair. While the role was typically melodramatic soap fare, it acted as a springboard for Selleck's TV career, which blossomed to full-blown stardom when he was cast in Magnum P.I. in 1980.

Alec Baldwin has moved back and forth between primarily acting in films and primarily acting in television throughout his career, with an early role on Knot's Landing helping elevate his profile enough to be cast only two years later in Beetlejuice and Working Girl. Baldwin hailed from a family of four acting brothers, known early for their red-blooded American looks and bad boy images. Despite Alec's move into films in the '90s, he would eventually return to network television, acting on 30 Rock for eight seasons in total.

Julianne Moore is most known for her breakthrough indie films in the '90s, making it easy to forget that she too got her start in the kitschy universe of soap operas. Moore first appeared in one episode of the soap The Edge of Night, before her breakthrough role(s) playing half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina Hughes on As the World Turns. Moore impressed with her ability to play these polar opposite roles on the same show, and her shock of red hair became her calling card, helping get her exposure and earn a Daytime Emmy. By the '90s she had begun securing regular roles in films, before her breakout in Boogie Nights led to her first Oscar nomination.

Meg Ryan played Betsy Montgomery on As the World Turns from 1982 to 1984, being featured in one of the show's most talked-about romances. That included one of ATWT's most memorable wedding episodes, before her romance took a dramatic turn for the worse. Ryan had only acted in commercials before the soap opera, and only two years after her tenure she played Carole Bradshaw, Goose's wife in Top Gun. Her scene opposite Maverick (Tom Cruise), after Goose's tragic demise, got her serious notice — leading to a spate of the romantic comedy roles for which she would eventually become famous — starting with her most memorable in When Harry Met Sally in 1989.

A World Apart was the creation of Katherine Phillips, daughter of Irna Phillips, who had created many of the most famous soap operas in tv history. The daytime drama produced many notable actors, none more so than Susan Sarandon. Sarandon spent only a season on the soap, though the stint wouldn't vault her to immediate fame. Despite acting in a cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a few years after, and getting an Oscar nom for Atlantic City, she remained a working actress until the late '80s, when her roles in Bull Durham and The Witches of Eastwick helped her achieve A-List status. In 1995, she would finally break through at the Oscars, winning Best Actress at the 1995 awards for her role in Dead Man Walking.

Long before her memorable roles of the '90s, Demi Moore found her way onto the soap opera General Hospital. Moore acted on the show from 1982-1984, getting an immediate boost in profile that led to movie roles in St. Elmo's Fire and One Crazy Summer. While she became a recognizable face at this point in her career, it would take another five years for her breakthrough role in Ghost, a mega-smash that earned over $500 million at the gate and led Moore to having her pick of future roles — at a much higher fee. For her work in G.I. Jane, Moore secured a cool $11 million, before her then-recording-breaking $12.5 million dollar fee in Striptease.

In the early '80s, Kevin Bacon had a two-season stint on Guiding Light. Bacon quickly outgrew the show though, as he was already landing film roles concurrently. He may have stayed on Guiding Light had it not been for his casting in Footloose, which brought him to instant fame as the star of one of 1984's biggest films, displaying his incredible dancing prowess in the process. Still, Bacon remained a working actor throughout the '80s, before dramatic '90s roles in JFK, A Few Good Men, and Apollo 13 would help him shed his youthful image and become more sought-after for his sheer acting talent.

Brad Pitt is as high-profile an actor as has ever been to come out of the soap world, despite humble beginnings on the show Another World. The series is one of the longest running soaps in history — though Pitt only joined for a few episodes in 1987. That same year, Pitt started to land small roles in film, middling his way through the beginnings of an acting career. 1991 saw Pitt start to blow up, when he played a memorable role in Thelma and Louise, which made him a pinup while simultaneously showing that he could act in a large, supporting dramatic role. Still, he wasn't an overnight success, though he secured some starring roles in A River Runs Through It and Cool World. 1994 saw him elevate to the stardom of today as he acted opposite Tom Cruise in Interview With the Vampire and brought out his full-on machismo in the role of Tristan in Legends of the Fall.

Curiously, Michael B. Jordan had already had a memorable role on a major HBO series, The Wire, before his soap opera career. As a young actor with few roles under his belt, his team felt it necessary that he maintain some face recognition, so Jordan spent 3 seasons on the soap All My Children. In an ironic twist, the other actor to play the role was Chadwick Bozeman, whom Jordan would play opposite in Black Panther, the film that helped both actors reach their stratospheric heights. Hosting Saturday Night Live years later, Jordan said, "Yesterday, I had a full-circle moment. We pre-shot some videos for the show, and when I got to the studio, I realized it was the exact same place where I shot one of my first acting roles on the soap opera ‘All My Children.’ I was 16 years old." The moment — a coming out party of sorts for Jordan — was met with uproarious applause.

Leonardo Di Caprio has reached such heights as a dramatic actor, it's easy to forget that long ago, he was a child actor from humble origins. Growing up in Echo Park in Los Angeles, Di Caprio's mother would take him out on auditions as a child, one of which led to Di Caprio's casting in a five episode arc on Santa Barbara as Young Mason Capwell, tracing the childhood origin story of a series regular. The role was another link in the chain of Di Caprio's career, proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the important place of soap operas in Hollywood, as a breeding ground for many of the biggest names in the industry.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mike Damski studied Art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY while beginning a twenty year career in Film and TV, performing nearly every job on set from Production Assistant to Stuntman. His credits include Prime, Surviving Christmas, Alex and Emma, The Sopranos, Royal Pains, Taxi, Little Manhattan, Early Edition, Boston Public and many more. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon.