A Quote by John C. McGinley

The learning curve on soaps is through the roof because it's a three-camera setup. There's a master and then there's two singles. And the great thing about soaps, and soap actors will tell you, is that when you get your line wrong, they don't re-shoot it. They just cut to the person listening.
I can't imagine soaps will ever stop, because people will always watch as long as they have great stories and characters. But the soaps will have to keep evolving, won't they?
People tell me not to do a soap, but it was a great learning experience because I became familiar with the technical aspects of the business. Besides, look who came out of soaps - Julianne Moore, Demi Moore, Tommy Lee Jones, Parker Posey, Kathleen Turner. All amazing people.
How many soaps does P&G make? In a sense, they're all the same. Can you tell me the difference between trading soybeans, cotton and rubber? They're all soaps to us.
Considering the popularity of soaps with the African-American audience, it's grotesque that the entertainment industry, for all its vaunted liberalism, is lagging so far behind social changes in the United States. And why has there never been an all-black daytime network soap? It would probably blow the white soaps off the map.
The general view is that actors start on soaps and then maybe graduate to prime-time television or film; normally you don't see a film actor going to do a soap.
A huge part of what we do as actors is learning to ignore the camera, as if it's not even there, while simultaneously being very aware of the camera and what it's capturing, because you can give the best performance of your life, but if you do it with the back of your head facing the camera, it's going to get cut from the movie.
It irritates me so much the way people talk about soaps because it is far more difficult working on a soap than it is on a big studio film.
Making photos is helpful of course to master the craft. To get comfortable with the camera. Learn what a camera can do and how to use the camera successfully. Doing exercises for example if you try to find out things that the camera can do that the eye cannot do. So that you have a tool that will do what you need to be done. But then once you have mastered the craft the most important thing is to determine why you want to shoot pictures and what you want to shoot pictures of. That's where the thematic issue comes to life.
Marg Helgenberger and I were waitresses in the same restaurant in Evanston, Illinois. I'm happy to say that that restaurant has since been torn down. [...] We both had an audition for ABC soaps - different soaps, but we auditioned at the same time, and she got the part and went off to New York. Three years later, I went to L.A. So she was kind of an inspiration to me. And it makes sense that we will both be in Wonder Woman together, because we ARE Wonder Women.
Soaps have a schedule where you have to be done in 15 minutes. With an hour show, there's no way to get off schedule. On a movie, it's a lot easier to go back and reshoot scenes. I wasn't used to that at all... taking the time to really make each scene as good as it can be, which you can't do on soaps.
Learning ballroom dancing is great for your brain. But it only works for three to six months. After that, you've got all the benefit you can get, and so you have to move on to yoga, and then Tai Chi, and then bridge, always keeping on the steep part of the learning curve.
I'm not that keen to do a daily soap, but I'm always ready for reality soaps.
I try and shoot as often as I can, I cross shoot. I have at least two cameras rolling at the same time. So I'll have two actors or two sets of actors at a time so everybody's basically on camera. So when they improvise we have everybody's coverage. And you can then go in the editing room and find the energy still stays there.
When you're on a daytime drama you get one page, you better damn well know your character. You better know what she would do in every situation because it's a very, very fast paced business. You do ninety pages a day on a Soap Opera. It's insane. It's such a small world, the soaps. It's all contained in one little studio.
Soaps are the best. They really are. If you can do a soap, well, you can do anything. You have to learn pages of dialogue very quickly.
Doing the soaps, every day it's constant training. Dealing with camera angles, the other people - it's great training.
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