Maurice Benard - Nothing General About It

S ome twenty-seven years ago, mobster Michael Sonny Corinthos, Jr., appeared in the fictional city of Port Charles, New York, and took the townand General Hospital fans around the worldby storm. Through the years, Sonny has survived his enemies, his wives, and himself, and fans know that there have been a lot of enemies, a lot of wives, and many personal demons.

We have that in common, me and Sonny, that battle against ourselves. Not so much the enemies and wives partIm grateful that I met the love of my life when I was twenty-two and eventually got to marry her in spite of the many obstacles we faced. But Ill get to that; thats a pretty wild story, too.

Its funny, because when the General Hospital executives created the character for me in 1993, I believed life was going to be great: Hollywood, glamour, money, fame... skys the limit. But rocketing to notoriety wasnt as glamorous as people might think, and neither was what would become a decades-long love/hate relationship with Sonny, a guy who nobody else has ever played.

There wasnt even a honeymoon period on the showonly three weeks in and I was already in serious trouble. It wasnt the kind Corinthos gets into, either. Hes always caught up in mobster problems, legal issues, someone trying to take over his territory. Nobody was shooting at me or threatening my kidsI didnt even have kids yet.

Nobody was trying to rip me off or put me in jail, it was true, but I did have a credible and insidious enemy that was very dark and very lethalit just wasnt a rival mobster in Port Charles. My enemy was worse because there was no way I could escapeI physically could not get out of harms way because my enemy was me.

If your job requires that you learn twenty pages of dialogue a night, and film every single day, without multiple takes, you had better show up prepared, because in daytime TV you dont get to have bad days or sick days. Binge-watching may seem like a new thing, but that audience has always been there for daytime TV, ravenously tuning in every single day expecting to see what happens next.

Sometimes, because the show literally must go on, you just have to fake it. I had learned how to do that, to get through the anxiety, until one day when it all fell apart. That morning I got to set and couldnt remember my lines at all, but what was even more disturbing was that I could barely move. I was too terrified to look in the mirror, because I had no idea who or what I would see. It took everything inside me to open the door and walk out of my dressing room. Ill never forget how alone I felt, how the fear consumed me.

Beyond that, I was also hallucinating, and I dont mean that I was seeing something warm and fuzzy. I was seeing the devil and I was hearing voicesvery scary voices telling me to do very bad things. I was convinced they were real, and nobody knew, not the producers, the other actors, or the crew. They had no clue who I was, how I was wired, or that the new guy was in a profound crisis.

How could theyIm an actor, after all, right? I can pretend to be anyone, to feel anything, and I had gotten good at fooling myself since the same darkness had started plaguing me as a kid. So now I was in deep shit because I was broke, I needed the money to support my wife, and I couldnt lose this job.

My demons had something else in mind; they had their claws in me and I couldnt fight it because I didnt have the tools to fight. See, I had stopped taking my medication two years before because I felt great. I had fooled myself into the biggest lie of all, believing I didnt need lithium anymore.

Man, was I wrong.

When you have severe bipolar disorder, and you dont take your meds, you may end up chasing your wife, or, worse, threatening to kill her. You might wind up nearly ruining everything youve built for yourself. Just like Sonny, I had tried to hide from what was in front of me.

But thats the thing about mirrors, theres no way of escaping.