Four decades separated Anne Baxter's Oscar for The Razor's Edge in 1947 and her run as hotel owner Victoria Cabot on Hotel. She joined the show in 1987, taking over for Bette Davis after illness forced Davis out. Baxter died the following year, making it her final screen role. The woman who once played Eve Harrington in All About Eve spent her last months on a nighttime soap. | © 20th Century Fox
Gentleman's Agreement earned Celeste Holm an Oscar in 1948, playing a magazine writer opposite Gregory Peck. Decades later she turned up on Loving as Isabelle Alden, a matriarch with money and secrets. Soap writers loved casting old Hollywood royalty into these roles because the gravity came pre-installed. Holm brought an Academy Award's worth of presence to a show most of her film fans never watched. | © AP
Blanche DuBois broke Kim Hunter's career wide open when she won an Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1952. She played Stella opposite Marlon Brando, a role she originated on Broadway first. Years later she showed up on Edge of Night as Nola Madison, a washed-up actress chasing one more break. The irony of that casting probably wasn't lost on anyone in the room. | © 20th Century Fox
Dorothy Malone won her Oscar in 1957 for Written on the Wind, playing a reckless oil heiress opposite Rock Hudson. That same kind of tangled melodrama followed her straight into television. She spent the mid 1960s on Peyton Place as Constance MacKenzie, a woman guarding a secret about her daughter's parentage. The show ran twice a week and made Malone one of its biggest draws. | © ABC
Before she was Ronald Reagan's first wife, Jane Wyman was an Oscar winner playing a woman who can't speak a word. That performance in Johnny Belinda won her the award in 1949. Three decades later she was speaking plenty, scheming her way through vineyards as Angela Channing on Falcon Crest. The show ran from 1981 to 1990 and made her a weekly fixture in American living rooms. | © Universal Pictures
Replacing another actress in a long-running role rarely goes smoothly, but Donna Reed stepped into Miss Ellie on Dallas in 1984 without much fuss. She'd won her Oscar for From Here to Eternity back in 1954, three decades earlier. Barbara Bel Geddes had originated the part and would return to it the following year. Reed's run lasted one season, and it turned out to be her final screen role before her death in 1986. | © RKO Radio Pictures
George Kennedy spent years as Carter McKay on Dallas, a rancher with none of the glamour of the Ewings. That part came long after 1968, the year he won an Oscar for Cool Hand Luke. He played Dragline, the prison inmate who eggs Paul Newman into his famous egg-eating bet. Twenty years and a gap of several film decades sat between that trophy and his first scene on the ranch. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
The Fighter earned Melissa Leo an Oscar in 2011 for playing Alice Ward, the fierce mother of boxer Micky Ward. Before that, she logged time on All My Children as Linda Warner, a role few of her later fans ever saw. Soap work doesn't usually lead to Supporting Actress wins. Hers did, and she thanked the Academy with a stray curse word during her speech that night. | © ABC
Housemaids don't often become Oscar winners, but Allison Janney's path ran through one anyway. She played Ginger on Guiding Light early in her career, long before anyone cast her as Tonya Harding's mother. That later role, in I, Tonya, won her the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2018. LaVona Golden smoked on screen with a parrot on her shoulder, which is not something soap work usually prepares an actress for. | © Warner Bros. Television
A Fish Called Wanda gave Kevin Kline his Oscar in 1989, playing Otto, a weapons expert who thinks he's read Nietzsche. Years before that he was Woody Reed on the soap Search for Tomorrow, cutting his teeth on daytime scripts. The jump from daily serial to Best Supporting Actor is not a common one. Kline remains the only actor to win an Oscar for a John Cleese comedy. | ©
Two Academy Awards already sat on Elizabeth Taylor's shelf by the time she showed up on General Hospital in 1981. She played Helena Cassadine, a villainess who cursed an entire wedding party on screen. Taylor had won for BUtterfield 8 in 1961 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1967. Soap producers rarely land a guest star with two Oscars and a cursed tiara subplot. | © MGM
Twin half-sisters named Frannie and Sabrina kept Julianne Moore busy on As the World Turns in the late 1980s. She played both roles herself, which meant acting opposite her own double on a daily schedule. Decades later she won the Oscar for Still Alice in 2015. The actress who once juggled two characters a day eventually got the one that mattered most. | © Focus Features
Dr. Mark Toland was a minor role, the kind of part actors forget they took. Tommy Lee Jones played him on One Life to Live in the early 1970s, years before anyone outside Texas knew his name. He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1994 for The Fugitive. The federal marshal chasing Harrison Ford once chased a soap opera paycheck instead. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
A character named Marcy Thompson doesn't exactly scream future Oscar winner. Marisa Tomei played her on the soap opera As the World Turns before landing the role of Mona Lisa Vito. That performance in My Cousin Vinny won her the Academy Award in 1993, a result so unexpected that rumors spread the wrong name got read. Jack Palance presented the award and nobody on stage looked surprised but Tomei. | © 20th Century Fox
Mike Bauer was a child character on Guiding Light, and Christopher Walken played him back when the show still aired on CBS in the early 1950s. He was a kid actor long before he became known for playing unpredictable men in films like The Deer Hunter. That 1978 role earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Few actors can say their career started in a soap opera nursery and ended in a Vietnam War film. | © Columbia Pictures
Before the prestige roles and awards podiums, plenty of Oscar winners were cutting their teeth on melodramatic daytime TV. Here are 15 Oscar winners who got their start in cheesy soap operas.
