Celebrities You Didn’t Realize Got Their Start On One Life To Live

Actor, producer, and director Blair Underwood has appeared on series such as “Quantico” and “Sex and the City” and in movies such as “Deep Impact” and “Rules of Engagement.” But when he first began his acting career in the ’80s, he spent time in Llanview, playing Bobby Blue on “One Life to Live.”

Underwood has fond memories of his time on the soap and even credits his co-star, Erika Slezak, with mentoring him on set. “Erika Slezak was one of my mentors in that arena. I was only there for three months, but she took me under her wing from day one,” he told Soap Central. “A lot of our scenes were together … I was just out of theater school, Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, and I didn’t know anything … So I’ll always be grateful to her for that. She probably looked [at] me and said, ‘This kid needs some help! I’m gonna help him out.’”

His experience on “One Life to Live,” which served as a stepping stone for him, led him to greatly respect the genre. “I learned to have great respect for that type of work,” he said in a 2011 interview on “HipHollywood.” “Because there are many, many people that I know who have done that for many years, and they get a bad rap for whatever reason. … But there are some very good actors in that medium.”