PICS: Stars' Soap Opera Beginnings
After 43 years of breakups, makeups and shakeups, ABC's One Life to Live will airs its final episode Friday.
The beloved soap opera helped launch the careers of many young stars, including Hayden Panettiere, Marcia Cross and Laurence Fishburne.
Fishburne, now 50, was just 12 years old when he won the role of adopted street kid Joshua Hall in 1973. "I got to miss school two days a week and go to the city!" the actor recalls.
PHOTOS: STARS' SOAP OPERA BEGINNINGS
Other One Life to Live alums include Ryan Phillippe, Yasmine Bleeth, Brandon Routh, Tommy Lee Jones and Blair Underwood.
The soap opera isn't the only daytime casualty: All My Children, which premiered in January 1970, ended in September 2011. It featured several future A-listers, including Josh Duhamel, Mischa Barton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jesse McCartney, Sarah Hyland, Melissa Leo, Kelly Ripa and Amanda Seyfried.
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2i think if the soaps were like the south american soaps...the audience would be more interested... 6 month and then the story is finished
Soaps have launched so many stars, like Meg Ryan and Marisa Tomei (As the World Turns), Alec Baldwin (The Doctors), Morgan Fairchild (Search for Tomorrrow), Kevin Bacon (Guiding Light), Kate Jackson (Dark Shadows), Demi Moore and Janine Turner played sisters on General Hospital, Nathan Filion was on One Life to Live...that's not all, of course, and I'm probably missing quite a few. But it's too bad actors won't have soaps to work in, and learn from. I've heard it's very hard work, but it teaches actors a lot. This is a dying genre, sad to say.