Soap Opera Superman

SID, 6/27/00

by Rosemary Rossi

were on these dune-type hills that were covered with ivy, and the horse had a difficult time keeping his feet.  It was a recipe for the horse going over backwards and the actor in the saddle ending up with a crushed pelvis.  But we did it.  Taking punches is nothing compared to that."

To Tell The Truth

    Though Martinez's GH alter ego not only is bruised physically but emotionally -- the result of years of letting fiancee Bobbie think he was dead -- at least now he has his gal back tending to his wounds.  And while Martinez didn't originate the role of Roy, he and Jacklyn Zeman have forged a strong and intimate bond.

    "The stuff that I get to do with Jackie, I just cherish," he says.  "She is so special.  I guess maybe because I've got a pretty long history of doing (daytime), I know how hard it is to do as well as she has for as long as she has.  And getting to be around her daily, I see the sacrifices she makes to bring what she does (to her performance)."

    Speaking of sacrifices, Roy held back for an eternity before admitting that he still loved Bobbie.  What was up with that?

    "It's such a typical thing that guys are good at -- trying to keep the truth at arm's length even though there's really no way you can," Martinez concedes.  "It's about time he came across."

Home and Away

    While Roy struggles to get his post-prison life in order, Martinez's life since coming to GH has fallen in line beautifully.  The structure of his soap gig suits his family to a tee.

    "Any time you have a job in town, everything gets easier at home," he explains.  "I'm managing (my son) Cody's baseball team so we have a lot of built-in connection over that.  I don't see the girls (Devon and Ren) as much.  In the last few years, (my wife) Leslie is more hands-on with their activities.

    "But it hasn't been hard for us," he adds.  "Our family generally works really well as long as Leslie and I are both around on a regular basis."

    And at GH, Martinez works really well as long as he's around a lot, period.  "If anything," he confesses, "my only gripe about the current situation is that I wish I was actually working a little bit more."

Daddy's Little Girl

A Martinez sings the praises of his on-screen offspring

    From the moment that the Daytime Emmy winner played his first scene with his GH daughter, Lisa Vultaggio (Hannah), there seemed to be a special twinkle in his eye.  And that spark wasn't just light reflecting off of viewers' TV sets, either.  It was, and is, for real.

    "The pace of our metabolisms is so similar that I have no problem thinking of Lisa as a relative of mine," Martinez confirms.  "She's very laid-back, and so am I.  And when I see the two of us on-screen, I don't have trouble buying that these people are sharing a similar kind of nervous system."

    The veteran daytimer's appreciation for his GH chip-off-the-old-block goes beyond their similar temperaments, though.

    "Lisa's a game actor," he notes.  "She inherited a tough position on the show -- she came in with all that giant Brenda vibe hanging in the air (after that character was killed off) and was thrown in the  center of this rather high-pressure situation without a whole lot of experience to fall back on.

    "A lesser person could easily have folded," he points out.  "It's really cool that she didn't.  She's got a real voracious appetite for learning and has dug in her heels and carved out some really cool space for herself. I have a lot of respect for her."

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