Lane Davies: "I'm afraid of fame!"

 In his role as a ruthless lawyer, he plays the devil incarnate. However, in his private life, Lane Davies turns out to be hellishly sensitive and shy. A man who would like to live "in a shell". TV Serien-Hits met him up close and personal.

 "In my line of business," Lane Davies says thoughtfully, "popularity and professional success are easily confused. This is the reason why I avoid the public in my private life." Although he portrays the diabolical lawyer Mason Capwell so effortlessly, he is afraid of fame. "Yes," he emphasizes, "seeing a soap magazine with my face on the cover at the supermarket checkout gives me the creeps. I start praying that no one will recognize me."

When things get out of hand in my life, I retreat to my refuge in the San Bernardino Mountains. That cools down my mind and helps me make clear decisions."

The ability to judge his own abilities realistically has given the actor a special status uncommon among soap stars; despite his numerous "commercial trips" (Davies) to cinema and television, Lane Davies is considered a highly renowned stage actor. A passion that was instilled when he was working as a stage hand at the local theatre in his home town of Dalton, Georgia, carrying and nailing together the boards that were meant to be his world.

When he was still in school, Lane already performed in dinner theaters, studied at Tennessee and New York (among others at the renowned Herbert Berghof Studios), starred in his first movies and maintained close ties to the theater. His entering the soap buisiness - Days of our Lives, Dallas, Santa Barbara - did not change that.

"There were months in which I was acting in front of the camera at an NBC studio during the day and on stage at a local theater at night."

For two months every year, Lane Davies quits the Hollywood world altogether and performs solely at the theater.

"Sometimes even without payment," Nancy Lee Grahn reveals. "I admire him. Lane is a remarkable man."

Then the clean-shaven soap star turns into a bearded monster (hey, not my fault, it's in the text!), plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Marc Anthony, Henry V. or Cyrano de Bergerac.

"After the performances, I have occasionally seen him standing at the parking lot with fans in the pouring rain for two hours," Sharon Adams, editor of the two-monthly Lane Davies Newsletter, recollects.

Things have become more difficult for soap fans, since the amount of fan mail has risen a lot.

"I reply to virtually every letter," Lane says, "but sometimes it takes up to a year."

He devotes what little free time he has to his family. Several months after his wedding to Holly Swan, which took place on 02/24/1990 in Big Sur, Lane became a father for the first time. His son Thatcher Lee (2 ½) was born in fall 1990. Baby boy Nathan Hamilton (6 months) completes the family.

After the wedding, Lane Davies's work schedule has changed as well. He left Santa Barbara and had several guest appearances in TV movies and soaps, such as Married With Children or as a replacement for Ronn Moss in The Bold and the Beautiful while Moss was shooting another series in Italy. Unfortunately, a sitcom experiment, "Whoops!", did not become a series, although Lane's role there appeared like a parody of his Santa Barbara character: "I was playing a mean Wall Street yuppie." In the comedy, Lane is part of a group of six people who have to rearrange their lives after a nuclear catastrophe.

However, he never expected any laurels for his propjects. To the contrary, he even requested never to be nominated for the famous Emmy award. Why?

"The mode of selection is inappropriate. How can you award someone with 'Best Actor' when you've never seen all actors?"

Someone should give Lane an award for his modesty and his role as a human being in the show business.

 Authors: Wilfried Rochartz, Parvin Nazemi

Translated from German by Titania