All The Days Of My Life (so Far)

by Alison Sweeney

On January 6, 1993, I began my new life as a cast member of Days of Our Lives. What a day!

  If you thought I was nervous for the screen test, you should have seen me on that first day of playing Sami. I was absolutely petrified. Shortly after I arrived at NBC, I got a tour of the set, and was introduced to the cast. Everyone—and I do mean everyone—was so friendly and supportive, to my great relief. I don’t know why I was anticipating anything else, but being the new kid on the block, I just wasn’t sure if I’d fit in and how I’d be accepted.

  Well, those fears were certainly unfounded. The cast embraced me, and everyone behind the scenes—from the makeup people to the stage crew—couldn’t have been any nicer. In no time at all, I felt like part of the family. But still, do you know what worried me the most? In the first few days, I was scared stiff that I’d accidentally call the actors by their characters’ names. (Can you imagine me introducing myself to Matt Ashford, and calling him “Jack”?) Those are the kinds of embarrassing scenarios that created some sleepless nights.

  During that first week, I got my feet wet in a few scenes, but without a lot of dialogue. In fact, Sami was introduced slowly to the TV audience, and (as you might expect of Sami) in a most peculiar way. In fact, in the viewers’ first glimpse of her, she was lurking around Salem, shrouded in a dark hat and coat. She made a phone call…but did not utter a word. I didn’t even have to put on makeup for those scenes, since there was only a shot of my arm, or a camera angle from behind my shoulder, keeping me concealed in shadows. From the start, Sami was a mysterious character. Millions of Days’ fans must have been asking themselves, “Who is this person and what is she doing in Salem?”

  On the third day, Sami turned up at her parents’ home. She peered under the doormat, but didn’t find a house key there. So she removed her hat, pulled a bobby pin from her long, blonde hair, and used the bobby pin to break into her parents’ house. Sami’s father, Roman (played by Wayne Northrop at the time), heard the commotion that Sami was creating, and grabbed his gun. He snuck around the side of his house, confronted Sami in the shadows, pointed his gun at her and shouted, “Don’t move.”

  Sami froze. After a few tense moments, I spoke my first words on Days:

  “Daddy, don’t shoot me!”

  Fortunately, Roman didn’t fire the gun. If he had, my career on Days may have ended right then and there.

  A Little Help from My Friends

  Ironically, in my first few months of playing Sami, she gave no hint of becoming the sassy (and, let’s face it, sometimes obnoxious) character that she turned out to be. In fact, in those early days, Sami was a sweet, “good girl,” and Marlena (played by Deidre Hall) and Sami had a close, loving relationship. But I’ve had to remind die-hard fans about Sami’s innocent beginning many times—how could they forget? I ask myself! As it turns out, the writers of Days had originally created Sami as an innocent, naïve girl who may have felt a little inferior to her peers. Before long, however, she began to create chaos throughout Salem, one show after another, one year after the next. Early on, one of the prop guys and I would sometimes joke that there were two kinds of people in Salem—those who were given the key to the city, and the others who were given a bobby pin to pick any lock that got in their way; as Sami proved in that first week, she was definitely gifted with bobby pins!

  From the beginning, I was lucky to be surrounded by actors on the set of Days who were not only talented, but were always generous with their advice and guidance. I learned so much just by watching the seasoned cast working around me. What a wonderful experience to be in scenes with actresses like Deidre (Marlena), who is not only brilliant at what she does, but has always been willing to offer suggestions and words of wisdom. It’s amazing how quickly you can learn in that kind of environment. From the start, working with Deidre has given me an incredible opportunity to grow as an actress.

  Looking back, I was actually a little hesitant at first to ask questions of someone of the stature of Deidre, who created the role of Marlena in 1976 (she once described her role on Days as “my longest-lived relationship”). But then I figured, “Which would be more embarrassing—to ask Deidre a foolish question, or to make a foolish mistake with the cameras rolling?” The answer to that one was obvious, so I asked again and again—and she couldn’t have been nicer (and always has been!). I think Deidre could see that I was interested and eager to learn. So she was always receptive, always helpful, and definitely someone I knew I could turn to. She’d offer advice (“Why not try saying it this way?”), or give me an open-ended invitation to grill her with any question I had (“If you feel you don’t get anything, just ask.”).

  It may seem silly, but when you’re a teenager and new to the show, you’re afraid of what you don’t know. On Days, however, there were always people to turn to for advice. And as far as Deidre goes, I’ve always loved acting in scenes with her, even when our characters were fighting. She has always made it easy.

  A Juggling Act

  When I joined the cast of Days, I found myself with more challenges than just adapting to the demands of playing Sami Brady. Along with this wonderful opportunity to chase my dream of an acting career, at age 16 I still needed to make school my first priority. Both goals were worth pursuing. My challenge was to create room for both school and acting in my life.

  At the beginning, I figured that I’d work one day a week on Days, maybe less. My contract stipulated a commitment of at least half a day a week on the show, and I didn’t expect to be doing much more. After all, I had been a fan of Days, and I had noticed that the child actors weren’t on it very often, particularly during the school year. But the producers caught me by surprise. In no time, I learned that the scriptwriters had big plans for Sami. Almost from the start, she was a key player in the story lines of Days, requiring me to adapt to a three-day-a-week schedule. Fortunately, my schoolwork wasn’t a casualty of the increased demands on my time—and I loved the challenge of juggling the two.

  I was so fortunate that my own high school—a private school in the L.A. area—couldn’t have been more accommodating. My teachers were thoroughly understanding and supportive of my career, and they made every effort to make sure I didn’t fall behind. If I needed help after school, the teachers were always there. If I had questions, they patiently answered every one of them.

  On the set of Days, the producers were just as supportive of my academics. They provided me with a teacher (by law, they have to do so, allowing minors to spend at least three hours a day on schoolwork while on the set). They even hired a special tutor to help me with my chemistry homework because (yes, let’s face it) chemistry was not my strong suit.

  At the time, the Days’ daily schedule was very demanding for both the actors and the crew. Although our timetable has changed since then, the entire cast arrived at the studio sometime between 6 and 8 A.M. (ugh!) to prepare for what’s called a “dry block” through the script, which I explained a little at the bottom of page 20. (“Blocking” is the physical movement in a scene—and when Sami decides to turn away from Lucas and move over to the table in the corner, that’s called a “cross” so in “dry blocking,” the director will tell me that on a specific line, I am supposed to “cross” stage left. Is this making sense?)

  At 8 A.M., we’d “camera block” the entire show, which means that the actors act out the scenes one by one so the cameramen and the rest of the crew know exactly where we’ll be positioned during taping later in the day. The cameramen have to know where we’re standing, and on which spoken lines we’ll move, and the audio department needs to know where we’ll be standing when we speak, so they can be sure to hear us! This rehearsal or “run through” of the day’s entire show lasted until lunch-time.

  After a meal break (which was also time to apply our makeup, touch up our hair, and change into our wardrobe), we’d move into a dress rehearsal of the show, and then wait for notes from the producers, which might include suggestions for script changes for the final taping. By 3 o
’clock, the taping would begin, which might take three or more hours from beginning to end. It was a very long, very full day—but it was not over yet. I’d head home for an evening of homework—and learning my lines for the next show.

  This schedule was so rigorous that it could wear you out if you didn’t pace yourself. Imagine being on the set from early morning ’til night, squeezing in at least three hours of academic work somewhere during the day, and then catching up on any remaining schoolwork at home. I don’t know how it all worked out, but it did. The studio teacher was always nearby, ready to work with me in-between rehearsals and during any other free moments during the day.

  But as exhausting as my life may have seemed, I really think school itself had prepared me for it. Think back to your own middle school and high school years, when you’d attend classes for a full day and then spend hours doing homework at night. That kind of schedule can run you ragged, too, even without trying to squeeze in a day of acting. So it never really felt like an impossible transition from full-time student to full-time student/actor—except, that is, for one added source of anxiety that often disrupted my nighttime sleep. I began having nightmares—the kind of nightmares where you awaken startled and a bit panicky. The dream was always the same: I’d sleep through my alarm, wake up late, and rush to the studio, disheveled and scared to death that I had kept everyone else waiting. It was a terrifying dream, and ever since, I’ve always been petrified of being late to the set. The morning “calls” or reporting times were so early that oversleeping seemed like a real possibility (or in my case, perhaps a likelihood!). Even today, if I “sleep in” until 8 A.M. on a day off, I still wake up a bit stunned and disoriented, convinced that I’m late for work until I can figure out where I am and what day it is.

  Except for minor inconveniences like that, my career on Days of Our Lives has been a wonderful part of my life, and the cast and crew have become very important to me. Even so, I knew that acting was “in my blood” for years before Sami Brady entered my life. In the next chapter, I’ll take you back to my earliest moments in front of the cameras.

  Chapter 3

  How long have I known that I wanted to be an actress?

  Just about forever.

  I think I might have been born with a passion for performing. I’m a native of Los Angeles, and I grew up in a musical household (my mom is a concert and studio musician who filled our home with classical music every day). I took the obligatory violin lessons and studied the violin seriously for eight years before I realized that my real love was acting—and I guess my mom realized it, too.

  With my mother’s support, I auditioned for and landed roles in many TV commercials. The first one was for Kodak film when I was just four years old. But if you’re thinking that my talent was immediately recognizable to the world in that first acting experience—well, not exactly. I didn’t have any lines to memorize, and frankly, the weather didn’t exactly make it a magical experience. Although the ad depicted a winter scene, it was shot under a scorching 103-degree sun in L.A. But not to let sizzling weather interfere with the winter fun, the undaunted ad agency shipped in a truckload of snow to create a Hollywood version of a snow bank. Bundled up in a little red snowsuit, I climbed aboard a sled with my on-screen dad, and on the director’s command of “Action,” we rode down the slope while photos were being snapped of us (Kodak photos, I’m sure!). It was an all-day shoot, and as one take followed the next, the temperature became ever more blistering. But the show must go on, right? The prop guys worked overtime, frantically hauling in fresh snow to reinforce the man-made “mountain” that was melting under us. It was very hot, and the snowsuit sure didn’t help! In fact, I almost passed out from heat exhaustion!

  Daddy’s Little Girl

  Virtuoso in training!

  Despite the boiling sun, despite the snowsuit, and despite what others might call a nightmare day, I do remember this: I really had fun. I absolutely loved making that commercial. I somehow knew even then that acting would be something I’d do for the rest of my life. There wasn’t a doubt. Some people are just lucky to be born knowing what they want and having the drive to pursue it. I guess I’m one of them.

  A Word from Our Sponsor…

  In the next few years, I took some commercial acting classes and went on a lot of auditions. By the time I was ten years old, I had appeared in about sixty TV ads. Some were as challenging as the hours on the snow slopes under a red-hot California sun; others were a breeze. Let me tell you about a few of my more interesting experiences.

  Wasn’t I cute?!

  When I was about six years old, I appeared in a McDonald’s commercial. In it, four other girls and I were sitting in a McDonald’s restaurant, eating French fries and giggling. Not too demanding, right? Well, at least not until the director ordered one take after another after another—requiring us to eat one handful of French fries after the next. You can imagine what happened. I was almost sick to my stomach by the end of the shoot. Now believe me, I think McDonald’s has the best fries around. But I ate so many of them that I was feeling pretty ill that night at home. I don’t think I had another French fry for about a year after that! Can you blame me?

  Then there was a memorable commercial for Chewy Chips Ahoy. I was eight years old, and it was a two-day shoot, filmed by a lake more than two hours out of L.A. My “call time” was something crazy like 5 A.M., and I remember my mom having to wake me up at 2 in the morning to make sure we got there on time. I had only one line in the commercial, but there were a lot of different scenes—one of me eating cookies at a picnic, another of me eating cookies with my on-camera mom somewhere else in the park, and so on. You get the picture. Plenty of scenes. Plenty of cookies. If I had a cookie craving at the beginning of the day, it was gone by early afternoon.

  When I was asked to appear in a second Chewy Chips Ahoy commercial, I guess I had forgotten just how demanding it can be to devour cookies virtually nonstop for a day or two. We did fifty takes of that second commercial—yes, fifty—each one requiring that I take a few bites of a Chewy Chips Ahoy cookie. This time, however, the director must have had visions of stomachaches sabotaging his commercial. So, he insisted, “Instead of swallowing the cookies, as soon as I yell ‘cut’ spit them into a bucket.”

  You’ve got to be kidding! At first, I resisted. But the prop guy kept warning me, “You’ll wish you had.” It didn’t take me long to realize that he was right. I probably ate only five cookies that day—and spit out 45 more! Fortunately, the bucket never appeared in the commercial itself. It was pretty disgusting.

  Nabisco promotes their cookies with the phrase “Ooey gooey warm ’n chewy.” At the time, I’m not sure if I would have described it quite that way. They are delicious cookies—however, after hours of eating (and spitting out) cookies, I must have worked myself into a sugar frenzy that took a week or two to wear off!

  The message, my friends, is that even a dream job like eating cookies may require biting off more than you can chew. The same goes with feasting on ice cream cones all day long. In one commercial, three little girls and I were supposed to walk through the park, licking ice cream cones. Sounds great so far. But it also happened to be a very hot day, and the director knew the ice cream wouldn’t survive a single take, much less a day’s worth of shooting. So he ordered the ice cream back into the freezer, and replaced it with “mashed potato cones,” with the mashed potatoes dyed green! Sounds delicious, doesn’t it? It wasn’t exactly a child’s crème de la crème dessert. But I made the best of it. As it turned out, we taped about forty takes, licking green mashed potatoes and pretending to enjoy every morsel. Now that’s acting!

  Child Acting 101

  I’m so lucky to have always had an amazing and supportive family. From the earliest days, they encouraged my interest in acting without pushing me in one direction or another. My mom was always there to drive me to auditions, but she certainly didn’t fit the stereotype of the pushy stage mom. She let me take the lead, and sh
e always said that if I didn’t want to go on auditions anymore, all I had to do was say so. With all that driving my mom had to do, going to and from auditions across town every other day, she would have been happy for me to call it quits at any time. She certainly never let the acting get in the way of my schoolwork or my friendships (although I was never a child who had lots of friends anyway).

  From the beginning, my family has not only supported my dream of acting, but they’ve also kept me grounded along the way. They’ve always made sure I’ve stayed humble—never letting my ego soar out of control, no matter how well my career might be going, and never allowing me to feel crushed by the devastating lows that are almost an inevitable part of being an actor.

  Of course, I’ve seen other parents driven by motives of their own. I grew up with kids who were literally supporting their families with their acting paycheck. Pretty sad. If that’s why a kid is acting—if it’s the parents’ dream and not the child’s—it’s not going to work. In my own childhood, I loved every minute of auditioning and acting. But it can be a pretty terrible life when it’s not the life you want.

  So how do I respond when parents approach me and ask, “How can I get my kid into acting?” When parents seek my advice, I tell them, “If your child really wants to give it a shot, go ahead and see if she likes it. But if she doesn’t, you’ve got to follow her lead and let her back off. If she starts to complain about not getting to see her friends or if she’s falling behind in her schoolwork, then it’s time to reevaluate.”

  Bitten by the Acting Bug

  It’s almost a joke, but it’s true: No matter what your age, if there’s anything else in the world besides acting that you could see yourself doing, perhaps you should consider doing it, or at least having it at the ready as a safety net. Breaking into the acting business is very difficult, and the chances of making a living at it are so slim (the city of L.A. wouldn’t have any waiters were it not for all of the out-of-work actors!). On the other hand, if acting is in your blood (like it is in mine), and you just can’t do anything else, then I encourage you to chase your dream. I completely understand when young people (and adults) tell me that acting is something they have to do.