Soap Opera Digest: Fearless Factor

Just the Facts:
Birthday: March 12 Provenance: Menard was raised in a suburb of Montreal by a French-speaking father and an Irish-Canadian mother. Stuck in the Middle: He has an older brother and a younger sister. "They're both married with children -- they have the traditional life that my parents wanted for me." Favorite actors: Kevin Spacey, Edward Norton Sorry, Oakdale: AMC hired Menard before it even had a character for him. Rumor has it that AMC acted so quickly because it had learned that As the World Turns was interested in him too. Why his modeling credits don't appear on his resume: "As soon as you say you model, it's assumed you'd get a role because of the way you look and not your talent." Oh, those wacky fashion models: "When I did my very first fashion show, the two guys behind me tried to tie my shoelaces together before I went on the runway." On his first months in Manhattan: "All I did was go to the gym. Now I'm not going as often. It's like, 'I don't have time to go to the gym? What's going on? Am I actually getting a life?'"


"I got into acting to meet girls" is a refrain Digest editors are accustomed to hearing from rising male soap stars, a surprising number of whom cut their theatrical teeth in high school plays for this precise hormone-induced reason. But what sets Marc Menard (Boyd, All My Children) apart from the pack is just how badly he needed a way to meet girls. "I went to an all-boys high school!" he explains with a laugh. "Drama was the only club where my school mixed with the girls school."

Sitting face to face with the strikingly handsome actor, it's hard to believe he ever had a dearth of eyelashes being batted this way, even with the extra challenge posed by his enrollment at a single-sex academy. But, he assures you, his distaff dilemma was very real. "I was only 5-foot-6 in high school," groans the now-6-foot-2 Menard. "I used to wear padding in my shoes. I prayed, did a lot of stretching...But even as a short kid, I wasn't easily intimidated."

Menard's fearless disposition has long come in handy. It enabled him to summon the nerve not to become a doctor, as his father had pressed him to do, and to likewise reject career option No. 2, law, even after studying several years towards his degree. Two things inspired this decision: a course called Simulated Course Study, which disabused him of the notion that what he terms "real lawyering" resembles the battle of wits represented by TV shows about the court system, and a chance encounter one night while working at a bar. He served a patron who happened to be a director in the midst of music-video casting woes. The guy looked at Menard and said, "You're perfect!" That gig begat another gig, and Voila!, just like that, he became a working model. "I had never planned on a modeling career," he shrugs. "I just looked at it like paid travel around the world."

And traverse the globe he did. But after three years of living out of a suitcase, oftentimes in cramped European boarding houses, he officially tired of life on the go. "It got to the point where I was like, 'All I want is my own TV -- and my own linens!" he laughs. Besides Menard, whose affinity for the performing arts dates back to those drama-club days (and must be genuine because, let's face it, he no longer needs much turning girls' heads), was eager to make the same runway-to-soundstage transition as fellow Pine Valleyites Cameron Mathison (then-ex-Ryan, see sidebar [below]), Josh Duhamel (ex-Leo) and Aiden Turner (Aidan).

He settled in Miami, mostly because the picturesque city had become a favorite of European fashion photographers, so he could continue to earn money modeling while studying at an acting conservatory. "I definitely made more money in Europe," he shrugs, "but I looked at the move as an investment in my future." He shot several independent films, then landed a short-lived, Miami-based series called Ocean Ave.

Jean Carol (ex-Nadine, Guiding Light), who played his mother on the show, became a trusted mentor. "We would do big party scenes with the whole cast, which are grueling, 12-hour days," says Menard. "And everybody would complain -- except for Jean Carol. She had more experience than anybody else, so if anyone had the right to be a prima donna, it was her. I thought to myself, 'That's why her career has had such longevity. That's the example I want to follow.'"

Having Carol close by proved even more valuable when AMC came calling: "While I was auditioning and even after I got the part, Jean sat down with me and gave me all kinds of advice, like how to avoid some of the behind-the-scenes politics that can happen [on a soap]." Carol also armed the actor with her account of how she turned her GL role into a seven-year gig by infusing Nadine with a previously unscripted sense of humor -- an approach Menard has adopted. "I do ad-lib stuff," he admits. "One day, [AMC Director] Conal O'Brien stopped me in the middle of a scene and said, 'Are you the director? What is this?' He said it in a fun way, but I pulled him aside later and said, 'Listen, I don't know what the protocol is here -- Do you want me to come to you and say that I want to change a line?' And he said, 'No, no, just do it, and I'll tell you yes or no.' (Thus far, he's heard far more yeses than nos.)

And his fearless nature has already come in handy on the AMC set, where his character has had occasion to mouth off to his boss, a certain Ms. Erica Kane. "They made me yell at Susan Lucci [Erica]!" he laughs. "You'd think I'd be nervous about that, and it did occur to me the first time Boyd stood up to Erica that, you know, it's Susan Lucci! But she doesn't make you feel like, 'I'm Susan Lucci, watch your step.' It's just like Jean Carol said," he concludes. "The ones who last, they last because they're pros."


Cam I Am....Not
When Marc Menard made his Pine Valley debut, online observers immediately remarked upon his physical resemblance to another model-cum-AMC stud, Cameron Mathison (then-ex-Ryan). According to Menard, there's a precedent for such comparisons.

"I've known Cameron for years," he reports. "We modeled together in Toronto. It's funny -- when I started modeling, Cameron and I were doing the same swimwear catalog. He'd been doing it for, like, three years, and they called me 'the blonde Cameron'. They'd say, 'Hmmm, for this [assignment], do we want Cameron or the blonde Cameron?' Everyone thought we looked a lot alike -- thought we had a lot of the same features and stuff. So, when I auditioned for [AMC Casting Director] Judy Blye Wilson], she mentioned Cameron, and I said, 'Yeah, I know Cameron very well -- I'm the blonde Cameron!' She was like, 'Perfect! He's gone, so we need the blonde Cameron!'"

Menard called his darker-haired doppelganger as soon as he was cast on AMC. Mathison's response to the news? "Cameron goes, 'You keep following me around! You keep stealing my jobs!' I was like, 'Yup -- I'm always one step behind ya!'"



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