A doll who came to life. A plastic surgery pioneer. A no-nonsense, chain-smoking mom.
These actors may have passed, but they left behind some truly memorable soap opera legacies.
The primetime soap Knots Landing premiered on CBS in 1979 as a spin-off to the
ultra-successful series Dallas. The show followed the suburban California exploits of Gary Ewing,
brother of Dallas' iconic villain J.R. Ewing.
Kevin Dobson, who was then best known for playing Bobby Crocker on Kojak,
joined the Knots Landing cast in 1983 as a new character named Patrick "Mack" MacKenzie.
Mack was a prosecutor, and he became a love interest for Michele Lee's Karen Fairgate,
one of the show's original characters. Years later, Dobson joined the cast of another soap,
Days of Our Lives. He played a recast Mickey Horton for the character's final
arc after original actor John Clarke and other replacement actors left the series.
Dobson passed away on September 6, 2020. The United Veterans Council of San Joaquin County
announced his death on Facebook, noting that he died from "medical complications"
that were eventually revealed to have been the result of an autoimmune deficiency. Cagney & Lacey
star Sharon Gless, who appeared on an episode of Kojak with Dobson, tweeted in remembrance,
"I am very sad. Kevin Dobson passed away yesterday. We worked together years ago
and he was an amazing man. I wish I had been given time to say goodbye. Godspeed Kevin."
EastEnders is a British soap that follows the exploits of working-class residents of Albert
Square, with the action taking place in, as the title implies, the East End of London. One of
the most memorable characters on the show was Dot Cotton, mother of notorious criminal Nick Cotton.
Dot quickly became a fan favorite as viewers fell in love with her no-nonsense chain-smoking ways.
"You was grown up when I was three, then when I was 17 you was getting on,
now we're practically the same, two old ladies. Don't seem fair to me."
June Brown played Dot for decades starting with the character's inception in 1985,
but the character was ultimately written out of the show in 2020. Dot left for an extended
trip to Ireland, and Brown's final lines on the show were delivered via voicemail.
Her time on EastEnders also included a BAFTA nomination in 2009.
Brown passed away two years after her character left the soap, on April 3, 2022,
at the age of 95. Though no cause of death was made public,
her family announced that she died at home "very peacefully." Nadine Dorries, the U.K.'s
Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, tweeted in recognition of the actor,
"There was nobody quite like June Brown. She captured the zeitgeist of British culture like no
other in her many years on our screens. Today we've lost a true national treasure
but my goodness what a life she has led."
After Brown passed, a mural of the soap icon was put up in East London,
near where her fictional character lived for decades.
Few villains in the history of daytime TV are as iconic as Stefano DiMera,
the head of the legendary DiMera crime family on Days of Our Lives.
Stefano was known as "The Phoenix," because of how often he came back from the dead. And
throughout his reign of terror, he was involved in more murderous plots, conniving relationships,
secret children, and kidnappings than any one fan could possibly keep track of.
On top of all those activities, Stefano was also involved in orchestrating together
private mercenary armies and guerrilla conflicts in Third World countries. And unlike a lot of
soap characters, who change hands as actors come and go, Stefano was only ever played by
Joseph Mascolo, an actor whose arched eyebrow could send chills down the spine of any viewer.
On December 8, 2016, Mascolo passed away at the age of 87 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
Some of his Days co-stars took to Twitter to memorialize a man
who cast a long shadow over Salem. Alison Sweeney wrote,
"I always had a sense of awe to work with Joe. He will be greatly missed."
And Chandler Massey recalled,
"Favorite memory of Joe: being scared for my life when I yelled at him in a scene."
Even Selling Sunset star Chrishell Stause, who played Jordan Ridgeway on Days, tweeted,
"So sad to hear of his passing. What a great guy [...] It was an honor."
Some soap stars come and go with their characters getting cast and recast. But
occasionally one actor sticks with one role for a lifetime, crafting a career out of playing
the same person on TV day in and day out for decades. Such was the case with Jeanne Cooper,
the woman behind the legendary Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless.
Katherine was a matriarch known for her decades-long feud with
another character named Jill, which CBS proudly called the longest-running feud
in daytime TV history. She even had a facelift done in the 80s, with the character and actor
both going under the knife at the same time. This was decades before shows like
The Swan and Extreme Makeover broadcast plastic surgery to millions. As Cooper herself noted,
"It opened up reconstructive surgery for so many people, youngsters getting things done. To this
day, people will come up to me and say, 'Thank you so much for doing that. My mom or I had
something done, and not just cosmetic surgery.' That was an incredible experience in my life."
"It was the first, and it caused a lot of, uh, it got a lot of attention worldwide."
Cooper finally left The Young and the Restless in 2013, and as her character departed,
so too did the actor, as she passed away a mere five days after her final appearance.
She'd reportedly been experiencing an "undisclosed illness," and she died in
her sleep. Her Young and the Restless co-star Joshua Morrow memorialized her by tweeting,
"These hallowed halls will never be the same."
Before she joined the cast of Days of Our Lives, Rhonda Stubbins White appeared on a number of
other iconic shows in the 90s, including ER and Touched by Angel. Then she moved into the
fictional town of Salem, Illinois in 2000. Her character owned a soul food restaurant,
which allowed her to witness the dramatic goings-on around town. 20 years after her
stint on Days, she joined the cast of Tyler Perry's religious drama series Ruthless,
where she played the character of Agnes, alongside fellow Days of our Lives alum Matt Cedeño.
White passed away from cancer in 2021 at the age of 60.
A friend announced her death in a comment on her last Facebook post,
which was the music video for Jon Batiste's song "Freedom." The friend wrote, in part,
"She was an amazingly talented woman, full of positivity and energy, and grounded by her faith.
We were all fortunate to have known her and shared her short time on this earth."
After the news of White's passing broke online, a manager confirmed
it to People Magazine. The Twitter account for Ruthless also memorialized White by sharing,
"We are deeply saddened by the passing of Ms. Rhonda Stubbins White. She has crafted a nearly
30-year legacy in television and film, and we are grateful to have had such an
incredibly talented individual and positive light be a part of the Ruthless family."
When Passions premiered on NBC in 1999, audiences were introduced to a classic soap-opera plot
device: a generations-old family feud, in this case between the Cranes and the Lopez-Fitzgeralds.
But in other ways, this was far from your typical soap, as it featured elements rarely
seen on daytime TV. The show's fictional town of Harmony was populated by witches, ghosts, and
even an evil martini-drinking doll named Timmy, who was easily the show's most iconic character.
Timmy was played by Josh Ryan Evans, an actor with achondroplasia, a bone growth disorder
that leads to dwarfism. His stature made him the perfect size to play the living doll. Though Timmy
was the most famous role of his career, Evans was also known for playing the child version
of the title character in the Jim Carrey-starring version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 2000.
Timmy died on Passions on August 5, 2002. The plan was then for Evans to continue to
appear on the show as an angelic version of the doll. But that didn't quite work out,
as Evans coincidentally also passed away on the same day that his character's death aired on TV.
He had a congenital heart problem, and he passed while undergoing surgery to correct the condition.
While Passions received poor critical reviews when it debuted,
it went on to become a cult classic. One BuzzFeed article in 2013, for example, described it as "the
worst-slash-best soap opera you ever watched," and that's thanks in large part to Evans' work.
"You're no Leonardo DiCaprio, but you'll do for my purposes."
Few actors in daytime TV have been as awarded by the industry as Kristoff St.
John, the man who originated the role of Neil Winters on The Young and the Restless in 1991.
Over the course of his time on the show, he received numerous Daytime Emmy nominations,
picking up two wins. He also collected a whopping ten NAACP Image Awards. During Neil's run on the
show, he went through numerous relationships, fathered a number of children, and enjoyed a long
career that stretched from cosmetics worker to CEO of the fabled Chancellor Industries.
Off screen, St. John faced a personal tragedy in 2014 when his son Julian killed himself. The
following year, St. John's family sued the psychiatric facility where his son had been
staying, alleging that he hadn't been checked for about an hour by the time he was found dead.
The tragedy hit St. John especially hard; a few months after he lost his son, he tweeted,
"In my fictional life [...] I am living with extreme
drama and wreckage. In my personal life I am walking through hell."
"That call was the worst call I've ever had in my life."
St. John ultimately wound up taking time away from the show for his own mental health.
He passed away himself just a few years later on February 3,
2019, with the cause of death reportedly heart disease.