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BACK FOR GOOD
Grant Aleksander looks at life - and LIGHT - through older, wiser eyes
by Alison Sloane Gaylin
Soaps in Depth
July 7, 1998

In the winter of 1982, a fair-haired young actor named Grant Aleksander walked into the GL studios and screen-tested for the part of Justin Marler’s estranged son, Phillip. At the time, the youth’s entire resume consisted of two roles: a six-month stint on CAPITOL and an after-school special called “A Very Delicate Matter,” in which his character “gave some poor girl VD.” (Note: Actually, CAPITOL came between his first and second GL stints.)

Another actor had played Phillip before Aleksander, but he didn’t know much about the character. “All the descriptions for young guys at that time looked the same: hot-headed, brash, doesn’t listen to anybody,” he recalls with a smile. “The only difference was dark or light hair.”

Looking back on his screen test, Aleksander thinks that the main reason he snagged the role was that “I looked like I could be the son of [Tom O’Rourke] the man who was playing Justin.”

But Aleksander was more than just a familiar face. In his 15-plus years (on and off) on GL, he’s made the part his own - so much so that fans on a GL Web site recently named him one of their favorite actors of all time. This year, he also received his first Daytime Emmy Award nomination. And most important, even though he’s left the show twice, he still likes playing Phillip - and has no intention of stopping. “I re-signed in March for two years,” he says. “So, unless they get sick of me, I’m on for at least that long.”

Temper, Temper

When Aleksander started on GL, Phillip was a loose cannon. “He was a very impulsive, self-indulgent person,” the actor remembers. “And he was self-righteous.”

The same could have been said about the young Aleksander, though you’d never know it to look at him now. As he sips iced tea in a Manhatten restaurant, it’s hard to believe that the soft-spoken, affable 38-year-old ever threw temper tantrums on the set. But, he insists, he did. “I remember a couple of dressing-room walls having to be patched up, a couple of sides of sets getting knocked down.”

An admitted perfectionist, Aleksander often was unhappy with his scripts and performances - and he showed it. “Most of it is fear of your own inadequacy,” he explains. “It doesn’t matter whether the scene isn’t written well enough, or if you’re honest enough to say, ‘I’m sucking in this.’ You feel like it’s not working, and you’re the one holding the bag.”

He pauses for a moment, then adds, “When you’re young and have all the hormones running through you, sometimes it expresses itself in a rather immature way.”

While some feared Aleksander’s outbursts, his GL uncle, Jerry ver Dorn (Ross), made fun of them. “When I got bad,” Aleksander reveals, “he’d say, ‘There’s the smell of burning martyr throughout the studio.’”

Support System

As “burning” mad as Aleksander often was, he did not self-destruct, thanks to the support of friends like ver Dorn and his “soulmate” Sherry Ramsey, whom he married in 1987 after an eight-year courtship. The pair had met in a college play. “I was Hamlet, and she was Ophelia,” remembers the former leading man of Washington and Lee University (in Virginia). “When I saw her up on-stage at the auditions, I was a goner.”

Ramsey and Aleksander were best friends first. Then, after six months, they became lovers and lived together in New York. When he decided to leave GL for Hollywood in 1984 - “to become a star,” he admits - Ramsey went with him. During his first week on the West Coast, he won a part on an Aaron Spelling pilot. “But I was still miserable,” he says. “It didn’t do good things for me as a person, and it did bad things for my relationship.”

The pilot didn’t get picked up, and Aleksander was relieved. Deep down, he is extremely private. In fact, when screaming girls chased him into a bathroom at his first GL fan appearance, he recalls being scared. “It was like being eaten alive.”

“I don’t like the fame part of this business,” he adds. “The little bit that I have to deal with, I’m used to. But I’m not sure I could’ve handled more of it.”

A Time To Heal

His priorities in order, Aleksander returned to GL in 1986. He loved the steady job and the family atmosphere on the set. But in 1991, he left GL again, for different reasons. Both of his parents had died at the end of the previous year. “My mom had lung cancer for a year and a half, and we knew that she was dying,” he explains. “Then, about a month and a half before she died, my dad had a heart attack and passed away. I think he sort of willed himself into it. I don’t think he could have lived without her.”

As a result, Aleksander couldn’t focus on GL. So, he and Ramsey devoted the next two years to each other, appearing in plays and restoring a Victorian house in Virginia. Then, when he felt ready, he began auditioning again. In 1993, he landed the part of ALL MY CHILDREN’s Alec McIntyre. “They made him the scum of the earth,” Aleksander says, grinning. “People loved that story. It seemed like every day, something happened.”

After Alec’s plot ended, in 1996, Aleksander came back to his old role - and a whole new set of challenges. “I’ve never really been a supporting actor,” he muses. “But now, although I’m working a ton, I’m connecting the dots for the characters whose story is a little more central.”

Sometimes Aleksander finds Phillip’s supporting status “hard to deal with.” But this time around, GL’s set crew doesn’t need to worry. “I save all my bitching for the morning,” he says. “Then, by the time I get on the floor, I’ve made peace with it. I refuse to ruin everybody else’s day.”