Josh Taylor

Days' Josh Taylor is one of the rare actors to return in a major role after having played a well-recognized featured player on the same soap. Like both characters, Taylor had his start in a small, rural town.

Becoming an actor was always "in the back of his head," from the time Taylor was a teenager in hometown Chillichote, Illinois. "I loved Paul Newman movies especially," says Taylor. "I always wanted to look more closely into the movie, see what was going on, how he did what he does." But the small town environment did not easily cultivate big screen aspirations and at the time Taylor knew his fascination with acting would be considered "too big a dream."

Nonetheless, he enjoyed an idyllic youth as one of Geroge and Dorothy Taylor's three children. "I was like Tom Sawyer with a football," he says with a warm smile, indicative of fond memories. His dad was a much-loved high school coach, and the town's Taylor Field is even named after the senior Taylor.

Josh Taylor received his Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth University and then applied to several law schools, "mostly because I wasn't quite sure what to do with my life and three more years of school sounded good." He received scholarship offers from Tulane University and the University of California at Berkeley, but he accepted the full scholarship from the University of Denver. Taylor earned his law degree, passed the Colorado bar, and realized "I'm not a corporate kind of guy," before heading to Los Angeles to pursue his first dream, acting.

Taylor landed a few small roles while he studied his craft. He was working as a bartender at Chadney's restaurant across from NBC's Burbank studio lot when he was cast the first time in Days of our Lives and his career went into high gear.

Maintaining that "no corporate guy" image, Taylor played blue-collar Chris Kositchek until 1981, then came back in the same role from mid-1982 to 1987. He won the title of Best Newcomer of the Year awarded by a soap magazine and later garnered several other awards and nominations. His favorite, Taylor admits, was Afternoon TV's kudo for "Sexiest Man of the Year."

At the time, Taylor was hardly a stereotypical soap male, allowing tight jeans, plaid shirts, a lusty swagger and sly sexy smile to become his trademark style. In Salem, he was employed at Anderson Manufacturing and, although appealing to many women, he was never very lucky in love.

During his first Days' run, Taylor was one of the first actors to simultaneously work on daytime and nighttime television. For a year and half, he worked double duty as Kositchek on Days and as Valerie Harper's pilot husband, Mike Hogan, in Valerie, a show which was later called Valerie's Family after Harper left the show and Sandy Duncan came in as Taylor's on-screen sister.

At the time, Deidre Hall was also doing Our House in addition to her Days' role of Dr. Marlena Evans. "We'd run into each other at the old MGM lot where both shows were taped, and at the Days' studio, of course," he recalls. "It was quite a busy time. That's when I first bought a car phone to stay in touch with nervous producers as I drove from studio to studio."

In addition to Days, Taylor's other soap roles include a three-week stint as Quentin Chamberlain on Guiding Light when actor Michael Tylo needed time off. Taylor also played Jed Sanders on The Young and the Restless for a year.

Taylor's prime time TV credits also include a two-year recurrent role as Jack McKay on Beverly Hills 90210, as well as appearances in Riker, Diagnosis Murder, Walker, Texas Ranger, Murder, She Wrote, Matlock, L.A. Law, Hotel, Today's FBI and Semi-Tough. His movies of the week include starring roles in Girls Fight Back, A Secret Among Friends, Woman on the Ledge, Semester at Sea, Happily Ever After and Charlie Cobb. In Woman on the Ledge, starring Days' cast-mate Deidre Hall, Taylor played the wronged husband of General Hospital's Leslie Charleson, who played one of Hall's character's pals. It is a small world!

On the big screen, Taylor's features include: Separate Lives, Valentine and Waltz Across Texas. Taylor has starred on stage in I Hate Hamlet and The Seven Year Itch, both produced at the Conklin Theater in Illinois. "I loved working there, a dinner theater out in the country, and easy visiting distance to my family," says Taylor. While doing his three-month productions there, the actor stayed at a theater-owned house built in 1857. "It's a fact that Abraham Lincoln slept there," he tells, and also notes, "and it's haunted. I had several personal experiences." For the Long Beach Civic Center, Taylor was the lead in Critic's Choice. He's also starred in productions of Bird Bath and Baby Want a Kiss.

Taylor is divorced and has one grown up daughter, Tristen. He owns a house in Burbank but tore down the garage to make room for his 1200 sq. ft. gym where he has "no excuse not to work out every day because it stares me in the face," he says with a laugh. In addition to weight training and aerobics, Taylor also practices his martial arts skills. His favorite past time, however, is watching football. "If I hadn't become an actor," Taylor says, "I would have loved to have been a coach."