The first thing you notice while chatting with Matt Ashford is not only how classy he can be, but mostly, how surprisingly humble he is. After all, this actor is easily considered soap opera royalty: From his first role as Drew Ralston on One Life to Live, to his wildly popular turn as Days of Our Lives' Jack Deveraux, and a daytime career that spans over two decades, Ashford is a legendary performer in this genre. But underneath, he's proven to be just a down-to-earth guy, a family man, and one who gracefully and enthusiastically accepts whatever fate has in store. I hope you all enjoy this exclusive one-on-one chat with one of soaps' most endearing (and enduring) actors, Matt Ashford.

Enthusiasm is the order of the day as Ashford excitedly shares his latest career ventures. He's gone from the studio lights to the stage lights, in his newest role as Officer Lockstock in the musical Urinetown. "It's a really fun show," he says, "and an opportunity for me to kind of show myself off in different ways that I haven't been able to do in quite some time - and I'm inviting people from the show (Days of Our Lives) to see it!" The co-stars coming out to show their support include Jason Cook (ex-Shawn) and Billy Warlock (Frankie). "Actors try to get out and do other things to keep their chops up and feel connected," Ashford continues, "And that's what I'm doing. But it's also a great, fun show to be a part of. I'm doing the role of the narrator (Lockstock) and he kind of runs throughout the show commenting on it and taking part here and there... but it's funny the way it worked out." And why is that? "I was originally doing another character but I was kind of covering this character," the actor shares, "And then the other person couldn't do it so I agreed to take over. And just at that time, I found out that I was going to be leaving Days, so I thought this is great to have something here to look forward to at the same time. So it worked out very well."

Urinetown's run will continue at the Matrix Theater in Los Angeles until the first week of November, but Ashford will not be stopping there. Next on his agenda, after a possible Days-related promotional trip to Australia, is the film The Unlikely's, set to begin shooting soon after. "It's a comedy about six or seven unlikely people who get together and make a movie!" he tells me, "The character I'm set to play is a guy I think is named Brock Chapman, one of the most famous soap opera actors in the world." Before the irony of that can even sink in, Ashford shares another tidbit about this particular role. "I also play a guy that looks like him. So I also play his look-a-like!" Ashford is hoping for a late-summer showing of The Unlikely's and says, "The script is changing around a bit but it's a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll have something more to show before too long and depending on how things go, we might have a screening some time before this time next year."

In the meantime, another Ashford film, The Exorcism of Tina Miller, is completed and being shopped around to the distributors. "Actually, the people who are working on (The Unlikely's) have asked if they might have first shot at distribution on that as well, which would also work out for us," Ashford smiles, "We have people looking into that."

"Everything in Hollywood Land takes longer than people imagine," he notes, "It really does. It takes a movie ten, twelve, fifteen years to get from inception to actual creation. Not that this is one of those but these things just kind of take a while." And Ashford is more that willing to be patient. "We're kind of growing and learning, "he says of the cast and crew of The Unlikely's, "And that was kind of a learning experience....Sometimes, just because that's how things worked on soaps, things change so fast - you've got to make sure that with a movie, you have a beginning, a middle and and end. And you've got to make sure everything holds together, otherwise you've got a real mishmash."

But daytime is a different story and Ashford says, "The story is an on-going story, hopefully. And so, a lot of times, things are left open and dangling. For example, with Jack and Jennifer, we had to start to laugh because of this mysterious "Deep Throat" voice, the whole 'chasing down the gun,' whatever it's going to turn into... you know the character of Patrick didn't do it. So once again, whatever Jack and Jennifer were doing had nothing to do with the story. It was just a total side note, but it was something we were chasing down madly. If you're watching from a greater distance, you'll go, 'These guys never do anything! They're like the police!'"

But it was this "side note" that had Jack and Jennifer fans raving because it was reminiscent of their historic banter and past adventures, and viewers were thankful for the trip down memory lane. "Absolutely, and I appreciate that," Ashford says gratefully, "We actually had some of the writers who wrote that stuff and then moved on to other things, I think they had a hand in that. It was really fun and I appreciate that the show gave us a chance to do that. But in the larger sense, I knew that we weren't going to be unearthing anything great! Like the poor Salem PD, they work and work to do something, and get it totally wrong, and then they leave it to the teenagers who uncover the truth of something. That being said, it was fun to do that stuff and a little bittersweet, because it's like, 'Wow! This is what we've been waiting for!'" Bittersweet, indeed, as both Ashford and co-star Missy Reeves (Jennifer) were both soon written off the show. "It was fortunate that we didn't just disappear quietly, as has happened in the past," he states, matter-of-factly, "We had a chance to do something and have a nice farewell." As for the chances of revisiting the role of Jack, Ashford reveals, "I talked to Ken Corday and he said, 'Well, the door's not shut, there are always possibilities.' Nothing that I'm aware of in the short term, but my feelings of the character of Jack, he definitely played before Jennifer and there are plenty of ways he can be used and played otherwise. I think I'd have more fun with him as a villain lately than anything else. Or a quasi-villain. That's what I'd work to do. You know, someone who creates a lot of trouble for others but you could see his point of view too. But once again, it's not up to me. It's up to the writers and those kinds of things....In the meantime, I pursue other things."

Despite rumors to the contrary, one offer that has not come Ashford's way is a return to General Hospital as Tom Hardy. "That's just selling magazines," he laughs, "You read the magazines, you know, there's nothing. I mean, they're busy. They're kind of in Sonny Corrinthos land. They'll be there for a couple of years at least! And the fact is that it takes up a lot of their time." That's not to say that other shows do not have room at their inns for Ashford's considerable talents. He had the chance to audition for a touring production of Camelot with Michael York, and ultimately decided against it. "I was getting interested," he admits, "I was going to audition... and I thought, 'Wait a minute. I'm going to be out of town for the entire pilot season. Maybe I should rethink this. This might not be good.'" Not even the tempting thought of working with the legendary York? "Leaving house and home for the better part of a year, you know, gone. No questions, you've got to go?... It's my time to say, 'Well, I've got to get back in the pool... Look, here's Matt Ashford. You haven't seen me in quite a number of years. I've been doing this soap.' And now I'm available!"

Ironically, during Ashford's prior leave from Days of Our Lives, another tempting offer came along, that of serial killer Stephen Haver on One Life to Live. His spellbinding performance drew praise from both fans and the industry. "I didn't do anything," Matt offers, in his adorably humble manner, "That's what's scary. I was just speaking really quietly. People were saying, 'Oh that's so creepy!' As we were doing this thing, 'Can I show more of this?' But actually, the character didn't show up until all of their other actors were already killed off too. I mean, they were all gone except for one, I think." Admittedly, this viewer could not stop staring and I told Ashford that the role of Haver was among some of his finest work. "Thank you," he says, still humble, "It was a really fun character... I would've loved to have been able to make him a much more beloved character at the university. Bree (Williamson; Jessica/Tess) and I wanted to make more happen, make it so that people would have more invested. But I wasn't there very long before the weird stuff started happening and that character was also written to be a short-term character. They saw that I was available and said, 'Okay, let's see what we can do here.' And they made it worth my while, but it was still a short-term character. I started to think that maybe it wouldn't be, but really, that's all it was."

So what is it that draws Ashford to the musical stage? "Well, I enjoy singing, but there are also some fun characters," he enthuses, "You know, within some of the things that we do, they have a little more behind them, and I enjoy the people we work with. John Rubinstein is a good friend who I've known for about thirteen years, and he is on this show (Urinetown) as well." But going from soaps to stage was not an easy task as Ashford soon found out. "Sometimes he (Rubinstein) says, 'You're speaking too fast and running through the sentence,' it makes it hard to understand what I'm saying," Ashford confesses, "What is the sense of it? And I realize it's like decompressing from working on the soaps. Sometimes I just have huge amounts of material to go through and I'm talking so fast that you're thinking, 'Well, if they can't understand it, maybe they'll tape it and run it through again.' But Jack was usually trying to sell somebody some hogwash or something and that doesn't necessarily work in a stage play or in a musical where you have certain things that really have to be said in a way that's understandable. You get caught up in certain patterns and this gives me an opportunity to break it."

"I love plays too," he goes on to say, "But out here in Los Angeles, there's not a lot of money in theater, so you do it for the love. Some of the plays which have gone on, I've had to say, 'Well, I have so much time over here, and so much time over here, I can't get out of this,' and I couldn't take off from the show (Days) because I'd be losing money just to go do the play. You have to take these things into account, you know, that's the job." But theater and soaps sometimes do mix and a perfect example is Ashford's role in the play, Deceit, which is now available on DVD. "It's a very interesting show," he says, "and you kind of don't know what's going on. But for me, I think the character is more like the classic character of Jack that I've played in years past. That was one of the reasons I enjoyed doing it, just kind of jumping into it, was that I had a chance to do something I hadn't done in a long time."

"I think of Jack as having a very dark side that he covers up with humor," Ashford observes, of the comparison between his Deceit character and the role which will always be a part of him, "I've always thought that. And they tried to take that away, but the humor was always just a sideshow, and unfortunately, became kind of a mainstay thing for my character, which makes the character become less important and kind of fluffy. I've always tried to use humor to kind of obscure the darker intent underneath, Anyway, this character from Deceit...has really harkened that back for me. So for anybody who'd love to see some classic Jack Deveraux, and hadn't seen this, I think that they'd truly enjoy it!"

Another topic that Ashford is passionate about is his involvement in retinoblastoma research, an illness that struck his younger daughter, Emma. "Thanks to the tremendous support that we've gotten over time, hospitals started to recognize the work that RBI is doing. And for that reason, the proteomics, which is the basic research in finding what goes wrong with children who have cancer that causes secondary cancers," he states, and hopes to have basic eye exams performed on newborns added on as part of the standard procedure. "There's always the secondary thing about pediatricians checking babies' eyes, which they don't really want to do, because it always seems like so much trouble, and that's where the children are missed when they have something wrong with their eyes," Ashford insists, "You know, they're either blind in one eye or worse, until later, when they find out from the child - it's too late.... When they check babies, they do a blood test, they check hearing, but they don't check eyes because it seems like so much and they think there is a greater chance of not seeing something. But there are more things being done now."

Among the possible new developments? A camera which can photograph a baby's eyes in a dark room to ensure the pupils are dilated, and avoid eye drops. "There's like a one in a million chance that somebody could be adversely affected by eye drops, and that's what the pediatricians are hanging on to," Ashford says, "One in 12,000 in the United States has a chance of getting retinoblastoma and it's much higher in third world countries or places where nutrition isn't so good. That's where the technology is hopefully going to make it easier for the pediatricians to do that check, because children have eyesight trouble. Statistically, six out of ten children who drop out of school have trouble seeing the board or hearing the teacher. So it's very real."

"You can help people early on, try to really kind of hook in, it might affect so many other things in a positive way as well."

And positive is just how Ashford feels in the face of his unexpected exit from Days, and he tells his fans, "I really appreciate all the support they have given. I'm always saying, 'Hang in there, hang in there,' and this kind of came along. I'm sorry if anyone feels like they've been hoodwinked, or I don't know what the right term is."

But "hoodwinked" may very well sum up the sentiments of most of the fans, and Ashford reflects, "When some of these forces come crashing down, we're just like employees in the factory. And I don't blame anybody for sending Jack off when the character of Jennifer goes. If I'd been a producer, I would've looked at me as well. It's just unfortunate, but I'm not a main character who has one of the main names on the show, as much as I'd like to think that." Before I can interject with my gushing argument to the contrary, he goes on to say, "I can't fault any of the producers. They're trying to save a quarter of a million dollars a week from the budget, which is impacting everybody across the board.... At this point, I've been seen mainly as the opposite pairing of Jennifer. But if they can get that out of their heads and maybe see me in another way, who knows, because I can play any number of things. That's really up to those powers."

"I feel that if hadn't had this support, I would've been gone sometime shortly after 2000," Ashford admits, "People continued to be very supportive of me and my character, and of me and Missy, and kind of kept us around. I just think that they recognized that we had some kind of inherent value, and part of that is because of the support from all the wonderful fans of mine and Missy's, and I really appreciate that."

Still, his exit came as a big surprise to his co-stars. "When I told Stephen (Nichols; Steve) he just kind of stared at me," the actor states, "I was like, 'What were they thinking?' because it's not good for him either. It's not good for him or Mary Beth (Evans; Kayla). I was looking forward to having this other family member there and he's kind of in that same boat." But Ashford, as a daytime veteran, is also seeing many changes on the horizon for both soaps and television in general as well. "Everyone has their own ideas about what's going to make these shows go, and the fact is, the only that that's really going to make these shows go are the fans watching. If people aren't watching, then all they can do is hold on to a continually shrinking piece of pie, or a perceived piece of pie, because I do think people are watching in the evenings, or on TiVo, or recording."

"Almost any show on nighttime has been turned into a soap," he marvels, citing Grey's Anatomy and House as examples, "They (the prime time shows) have to go to making things up and that's what daytime has been doing for years. So people can get their fix at night with a night time show that is conceivably better written and in many cases, much better acted, because they've had the time to work on the quality of those moments and getting those things just right, whereas daytime has to kind of churn out ninety to a hundred pages a day with people who are sometimes just first-time actors, or people who haven't had a chance to really take a swing at at. People are, I think, getting their serialized fix, their soap-type fix from that kind of stuff, because everything has gone that way..... But that doesn't necessarily bode well for daytime, especially if the people feel like, 'Well, I'm watching my nighttime soap.'... It just makes it hard for daytime and people trying to hold on to a daytime audience, because we have to ask, 'What is it about daytime that makes it worth watching? Why do they tune in when they can suddenly see ER, or Grey's Anatomy, or House, or any number of tings suddenly five times a week when they go into their syndication?' There's only so much time that people have."

"The real tough questions are, 'What do these daytime shows have to offer?' And hopefully that's being answered by the powers-that-be."

Still, he has high hopes for Days of Our Lives, and the recent installment of Hogan Sheffer as the new head writer. "It was a little bit of sad irony for me, because we get this guy that's coming in and he's going to start writing character stuff, and that's when I had to leave," Ashford sighs, "That's just the way it goes, and I really hope that they're going to start writing really great character-driven stuff for these actors to give them their chance... So, because I left, the show's really going to get a chance to bump up. My friends who are working on the show are going to get a chance to really do something."

As for his co-star Reeves, and her choice to leave the role of Jennifer, Ashford says, "She is really doing the mother thing. That's what she wanted to do, that's what she said, and she really meant it. She's been offered a number of things down there (Tennessee) and she's turned them down.... She wants to be there with her kids.... I think she just kind of realized that the writing was on the wall and it was time to move on. So she started making those plans, and that was quite a long time ago. She just said, "This is done. They're not really writing for us anymore, so it's time to look to my family.' And that's what she's doing."

"Things happen for a reason, and hopefully I'll bring a breath of fresh air to the folks on Days and a breath of fresh air to myself as well."