ESPRIT LIBRE // Press Archive

Forward, March (Soap Opera Digest 12/20/05)
by Mike Bruno

Forbes March is having the time of his life on OLTL, and he's doing it on his own terms

Just the Facts
Birthday: May 12
Alma Mater: March attended The Lee Strausberg Institute.
Preferred Poison: Vodka.
Family Matters: March's daughter, Marina, turned 6 last month. The actor is married to Vanessa Sergio, whom he met while modeling in Milan, Italy. She used to live with him in New York on tourist visas, "But after a year-and-a-half, immigration said, 'Listen, honey, you're not a tourist. You're living here. Either marry him or go back to Italy.' So we got married, and we have a kid and houses, and we're very happy to be together."
Just For Laughs: March recently took comedy classes to augment his acting repertoire. "I have no background whatsoever in comedy, but I was getting a little bored with drama, and it started occurring to me that the best drama is somewhat funny all the time."

Nash has been a hit on OLTL, for one simple reason: Forbes March is fun to watch. Even as his character's life crumbles around him, the actor never lets Nash drown in the drama. In short, March is serious about acting, but he doesn't take himself too seriously. And although the actor has sipped wine in Italy as a model and parties with Hollywood stars in Los Angeles as a television star, he seems to feel most comfortable wearing a tool belt and rebuilding a bathroom.

"There's something very humanizing about building stuff," March nods. "It's not in any way esoteric and self-important. It keeps your respect for other people, and I was taught from an early age to do that stuff."

Growing up in Halifax, in Canada's East Coast Nova Scotia province, March watched his grandfather, who was well-established in Canada's social hierarchy, find time to build boats, and his father, a professor, spend his summers building cabinets. Since leaving All My Children in 2000, March has continued that family tradition by doing major construction and remodeling to the three houses he's bought and sold -- in Hoboken, New Jersey, Toronto and Los Angeles. Although he is currently living in a Manhattan apartment, and misses being able to work on a house, March also admits that he's taking a little break from being Mr. Fit It.

"It was crazy," March laughs. "We had just finished the place in L.A. when I got this job. So we had friends coming over for the good-byes, and I'm there with the tool belt on, just finished it up -- the paint's still wet. Then we got on a plane and came to New York. My wife [Vanessa' is pissed [laughs]."

Wanting to do right by his wife and 6-year-old daughter Marina, and save them from Hollywood's shallow, ostentatious pitfalls, played a bit part in March's decision to leave Los Angeles, where they had been for about a year, and return to the New York area, where he'd lived while working as AMC's Scott from 1999-2000.

"I realized it was time to get out of L.A. when I was telling [Marina] to put a hat on or some stupid Daddy thing, and she flipped her hair and looked over her shoulder and said, 'Whatever, Daddy!' I just said, 'Noooooo!' I could already see the little collar turned up and the alligator on her shirt. I didn't want to turn into the epitome of everything I hate -- this pearly-white thing where she's like, 'How come I can't model when all my friends are modeling?' Model? You're 6! Skip rope! So I was like, 'You will not become this Valey, preppy little priss. We're going to New York!' It was like my version of sending her to a convent [laughs]."

Professionally, returning to soaps was a move that March was looking forward to anyway. Though Scott never really connected with the AMC audience, March always said that he would like to give daytime another go.

"I wanted to come back because I wanted to prove myself," the actor explains. "I felt like ABC gave me a good opportunity on All My Children, and I didn't have time to kind of pay them back. I thought it'd be fun to go back there and show them how much I learned. Not allow myself to get involved in the crap, but just go on set, have some fun, do my thing, have a little giggle and then go home."

Immediately after being let go by AMC, March stayed in New York to audition, and in 2001 he started a three-year run as Jesse Kilmartin on the Toronto-based sci-fi drama Mutant X. March describes the first two seasons as "ridiculous fun," but by the final year he started to get bored. So instead of stagnating, the actor started to take an interest in what was happening on the other side of the camera.

"That was a very important year," March recalls. "I spent a lot of time shadowing directors; I spent a few hours a day in the editing room; I was invited to a lot of production meetings, so I got to sit in and listen to the producers and writers do story and production meetings. I think it's important as an actor to be aware of not just the actor side, but to be able to understand the greater scheme of things. It lets you know what battles to fight for; it lets you know what you're really going for."

When the production company ran out of money after the third season of Mutant X, March was again looking for a job. Although he was wary of heading off to Hollywood, he did so anyway on the advice of his managers and agents, and it turned out to be one of the most miserable years in March's professional life. He auditioned for several roles, and was offered some in the sci-fi genre, but again, on the advice of his managers, March passed and played the Hollywood shoulder-rubbing game that he loathes more than anything on Earth.

"I wasn't enjoying it at all," March frowns. "It was everything I didn't like about the business. So much talk about 'You've got to have dinner with this person, do lunch with that person, make sure you say hi to so and so, try to look younger.' It was really distracting. I was really unhappy. I just wanted to get back in front of the camera."

The actor was growing increasingly frustrated with his agents and managers telling him to ignore his gut and play along out in L.A. The final straw came when OLTL came calling. At first he followed their advice and passed on an offer. "My manager told me, 'Oh, you can't go back to daytime. It's a career step back,' and all this blah, blah, blah," March recalls. "We were going back and forth, but [my managers] convinced me not to do it."

But OLTL didn't give up that easy and continued trying to persuade March to consider moving back to New York for the job, and their persistence struck a chord.

"I'd never had someone on the commercial side have confidence in me like that before," March gushes. "So I said what the hell. Let's get back to New York and get out of this place where there's been nothing but negativity."

The move turned out to be the right one for the actor, who says that career-wise, he is the happiest he's ever been. "I feel like I'm having fun this time," he smiles. "I don't think I'm going to be up for any Emmys this year, but I'm not pulling my hair out at the end of every scene going, 'Man, I wish I got another run at that.' ... It's a good story, Nash is a really fun character. I get nice, snappy lines. I'm having a blast."

March stresses that this time around, his reasons for doing things are much different than they were when he was in his 20s, struggling to make a name for himself on AMC. Watching his daughter grow up is one of the joys of his life, and his return to the Big Apple has proven to be the right one for her as well.

"She walks past the Lincoln Center every day with the ballerinas all around her, she's learning foreign languages, she's artistic again, she's creative," March smiles. "We play checkers in cool coffee shops and listen to jazz. It's a different deal. I ordered a piano for next week. We're back to being basic New Yorkers again."

Marching Orders?
Several generations of men on Forbes March's mother's side are named William Wallace, so there is a rumor that the actor is a direct descendant of the 13th century Scottish hero made famous in Braveheart. "It can't be. It's lunacy. It's ludicrous," the actor sighs. "He had no sons, so the bloodline stopped with him. Even more ludicrous, my last name is March. Who turned in William Wallace? March. So I'm half the ultimate Scottish hero and half the ultimate Scottish traitor."

Nevertheless, the coincidence once paid off nicely for March while he was vacationing in Scotland.

"I thought, 'Instead of being March, what if I adopted my mother's maiden name and became Wallace?'" he shrugs. "I got free bed and breakfast, free bus trips, free drinks everywhere I went. When I went to Sterling Castle, they brought down the museum curator, who gave a private tour of the place. I was like a returning hero from abroad. Like William Wallace himself had gone off on the American crusades and come back victorious. Ludicrous."