SoapCityAlina: So how does a kid from Pine Island, Minnesota decide he wants to be an actor in New York City?

Russ Anderson: He goes and sees Hamlet at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis at age 11 or 12. I loved it. I looked at that and said, "I gotta do that." The main thing that appealed to me was that I left the building a different person than I had entered it. I left and I thought, "I see the world in a different way." Because something happened to me, I saw things in a different way. That's always been the main appeal of acting to me.

SCA: How did you get started?

RA: I was active in the theater in high-school, but I went to Luther College in northeast Iowa for pre-medicine. I was going to be a doctor, studying chemistry and biology. But then I changed my major to music, and decided I needed a bigger school, so I transferred to the University of Northern Iowa.

SCA: And how did your parents respond to "my son, the doctor" becoming "my son, the actor?"

RA: They were supportive and concerned. In that order. The University of Northern Iowa had just finished building a brand-new, multi-million dollar theater complex, and hiring a whole bunch of new staff. So it was a great time to be there for undergraduate work. I got a really great, basic education in theater when I went there. Still, I knew I needed to be in New York. But a little farm kid from Minnesota going to New York, knowing nobody is a little frightening. We had friends of the family that lived up the coast in Connecticut, so I moved to New Haven after college and I came down on the weekends and occasional weekdays on the train to audition in New York. My first job was a year-long tour of Shakespeare. It was hysterical. We did two plays in repertory, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Macbeth. There were twelve of us, and we did it all. We drove the bus, we sewed the costumes. I was the electrician. I knew nothing about electricity. I'd go in the (theaters), and go, "Oh, those look good, hook the light, up there!" It was a lot of work, and it was exactly the right way to start a professional career.

SCA: How did you end up getting into television?

RA: I came back to New York after that tour and started working as a day player and an extra on soaps. My first one was on Ryan's Hope, I was an extra. I remember being very excited about that. Then I landed a couple day player roles on All My Children. I thought daytime was a great place to learn a different aspect of this career. After a couple of years doing day player work and some theater, I landed a contract on One Life to Live.

SCA: You played Steve Holden there, but didn't you originally audition for the role of Max?

RA: Yes, I did. There were five of us who screen tested for Max. I'll never forget this, they sent the other three guys home, and they had Jim (DePaiva) and me do an improv! I remember the cameramen were like, "What are my shots? What am I going to do?" No one knew. We went up with Andrea (Evans), who played Tina, and did an improv on the set. The producer said, "You play brothers. You're both interested in her. Go!" Boy, would I love to see that tape now!

SCA: What do you think it was about you that didn't work for the role of Max?

RA: I think they wanted Max to be a rascal, and they saw a balance that they could achieve with (Jim and me). I have an innate sort of Minnesota farm boy, Lutheran goodness. I suffer from high morals. I thought it was a great balance. And working with Jim and Fiona (Hutchinson; Gabrielle) was just bliss. It was the first contract for all of us, so we did everything together. We used to hang out together, go down to the village and listen to jazz, get drunk, just have great times where the three of us were very, very close.

SCA: Was it strange to audition for one character, then end up playing another?

RA: It was great and exciting to be cast because they didn't plan it, but it was also a bit of a curse because they didn't know what to do with me once they had me there. I ended up owning the hotel and sort of answering the phone a lot. "Mr. Buchanan, the phone's for you!" That was my big, famous line.

SCA: On the other hand, you did get a spectacular exit.

RA: My famous exit! There was a bomb planted at Tina and Cord's wedding to try to take Tina out. I was engaged to the character of Brenda and she went over to cut herself a piece of cake and for some weird reason, I spotted the trip wire across the room.

SCA: Must have been knowledge gleamed from your days doing theater lighting!

RA: That must have been it!... So I dove across the room, landed on her, and saved her. But I took the frosting and shrapnel in the back. It was not a very nice way to go. Killed by a cake.

SCA: So where does one go after dying by dessert?

RA: I went to L.A., actually. I lived there for about six years. I did not like the business in L.A., and vice versa. I really couldn't get arrested there. After a couple of years of struggling and not really getting anything, I got out of the business completely. I went and worked in computers for a law firm. If you had asked me, in that time period, whether I would ever go back to acting, I would have said no. Because I got a terrible taste in my mouth from the business in L.A. What is most important to me about the art and craft of acting, did not matter at all there. And what was important to the people producing and casting projects (in L.A.) was not important to me, so it was just a bad match. I remember some of the final auditions in LA that I went to. I came in and sat on some ratty old sofa and somebody chomping on a big cigar said, "Ok, we're doing one of these cop shows and we want you to rape someone on a washing machine, do you have a problem with that?" And I'm like, "What am I doing? This is so far from Hamlet!"

SCA: And yet, you came back to the business.

RA: I enjoyed working with computers, but my soul was going, "Wait a minute, this is not enough." I had an itch to get back and do this again. So I came back to New York. And coming back, I had a much stronger sense of who I was and what I wanted to do and what I would not do. I did theater for a number of years when I first got back to New York. I understudied Tom Selleck on Broadway for A Thousand Clowns.

SCA: Did you ever get to go on?

RA: No. Tom Selleck is as strong as an ox. God bless him. And after all those times I pushed him down the stairs -- never an injury! He did every show, but it was fun and Tom was a joy to work with. He was very gracious and wonderful. It became clear after a short time, though, that I did not really want to go on, because 95% of the people who came to that show came to see Tom Selleck. And if they had made an announcement that he was not going to appear, the vacuum caused by the people rushing for the doors...

SCA: How did the GL role come about?

RA: They wanted to do a storyline having something to do with psychics. They wanted to bring someone in who would explore Reva's psychic abilities, and also possibly cause some trouble in her family. They didn't have an audition scene written when I first came in. I did some old Phillip and Alan stuff. Then, finally in the last couple of auditions, they had a scene written that sort of went from, "I really think you should explore these psychic feelings you're having," to having Reva look at Christopher and say, 'I'm seeing things and they're leading me to you!" So it was sort of a three-page synopsis of what was going to happen in the next nine months, which was really fun. (Executive Producer) John Conboy runs an amazingly supportive and wonderful work environment. The atmosphere on the set is so friendly, and Kim (Zimmer; Reva) is great. She is hysterically funny. Off-camera, in rehearsals, she is amazingly funny.

SCA: Does Christopher have more than just a professional interest in Reva?

RA: I have some pretty strong ideas about what Christopher wants. Christopher is madly in love with Reva. Sometimes there are hints of it in the dialogue. Other times, I can do it with a look so that it flavors the entire scene. But, here comes my Minnesota innate goodness again -- Christopher will not jeopardize Reva's marriage. So that's a pickle, because what are you going to do? It's difficult to spend time around her. I was actually happy, by the way, to see that the writers did not really go in that direction. They played with it a bit, maybe rolled it around in their mouths, but they definitely did not bite that off, and I'm glad about that.

SCA: And are you glad to finally learn who Christopher has been secretly talking to all these months?

RA: I didn't know who I was talking to! They never told me who I was talking to! So I made something up. And it was not Jeffrey. But now, what Jeffrey wants has put yet another obstacle in Christopher's way. Because now, not only does Christopher have to deal with his feelings for Reva, he also has to deal with an ulterior motive.