It’s a familiar story: Actor joins soap, actor fulfills contractual obligation to soap, actor leaves soap to make it big. And more than a few actors, after giving their all to a stalled attempt at superstardom, do ultimately return to their daytime roots — sometimes very reluctantly.But Cameron Mathison‘s (Ryan, ALL MY CHILDREN) story doesn’t read quite like that. It wasn’t desperation that drove him back to daytime only a year after leaving Pine Valley for Hollywood; he did quite well there, thank you very much, landing gigs on high-profile series like C.S.I. and THE DREW CAREY SHOW. What did propel his return was a year filled with personal change of nearly every imaginable variety.Mathison’s life away from AMC was humming along just fine, you see — though “racing” is probably a more apt description. Immediately after wrapping his final scenes as Ryan last spring, Mathison and his bride-to-be, Vanessa Arevalo, packed up their bags and drove out to Vail, CO, where they enjoyed “a perfect, beautiful wedding — all our friends came in, we played lots of golf….” A week later, the newlyweds drove to L.A. and moved into a Santa Monica townhouse they had already purchased. One month into their marriage, the Mathisons started massive renovations on their home — and learned that baby was about to make three.Mathison concedes that this confluence of life-altering happenstances left him reeling. “Luckily, Vanessa and I never had a freak-out at the same time,” he laughs. “So, when I would start to freak out, she would calm me down, and vice versa.” On April 20, 2003, little Lucas Mathison made his debut. Becoming a dad, says Mathison, “didn’t change my priorities, exactly; it’s more like I became aware of what my priorities really were. Before Lucas, I didn’t know what was really important to me, what I really wanted, what made me happy. Then, my son was born and everything became clearer. I still want to be as good an actor as I can be and take classes and do different roles, but even more importantly, I want to live well and enjoy life with my family.”
These twin desires — to live comfortably and to enjoy doing it — stirred Mathison’s initial thoughts about the possibility of making an AMC comeback. “It had nothing to do with me not experiencing [in L.A.] what I wanted to be experiencing out there,” he explains. “But I think I was a little spoiled in terms of lifestyle; I just like my life better when I’m on the show. That’s the thing about me that may differ from other people, but from what I hear, Steve Burton [who returned to the role of GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Jason despite success outside of daytime] is similar to me in that way. Going from guest star to guest star was fun, and I was lucky to be doing all those jobs, but at the end of the day, I don’t like running around. And,” he admits, “it made me nervous, having a family and not knowing what the next job was going to be.”What’s more, Mathison found himself craving the camaraderie that had characterized his four years at the AMC studio. “Going from show to show, you don’t have the chance to form bonds with the people you’re working with,” he muses. “That’s pretty normal to expect as an actor, but again, ALL MY CHILDREN spoiled me. On some sets, I didn’t look forward to going to work in the morning. At ALL MY CHILDREN, there’s a lot of great energy around, a lot of love. I missed that.”Luckily, AMC was every bit as eager to lure back Mathison as he was to be lured. The show’s executive producer, Jean Dadario Burke, put out the first feelers, fresh from a meeting with recently re-installed Head Writer Megan McTavish. “The first words out of Jeannie’s mouth were, ‘Megan’s back, and she wants you back; we all do,’ ” Mathison recounts. “You know how they present it. But Megan [who created the role of Ryan] being back excited me, it really did. I said, ‘Let me call [ABC Daytime President] Brian Frons. I’d love to get to know him.’ So, I went with my manager to meet Brian Frons.” The meeting went well, and a deal was signed.It was, as they say, as simple as that. But sometimes, simple is exactly what the best things in life are. Just listen to him rave about his experience post-return: “I live 60 steps from the studio. I can go home for lunch. I can go home if we fall behind schedule. I can go home if I forget something in the morning. It’s already working out in such a great way, I can hardly believe it.”I kind of always knew I’d be back,” Mathison concludes with a contented grin. “I didn’t think it would happen this quickly, but I’m glad it did.”Note: This article originally appeared in the September 2, 2003 issue of Soap Opera Digest.
