In Print
Follow the links to our archive of Thorsten's print interviews and articles about the characters he's portrayed.
Above: On the cover of the June 26, 2007 issue of Soap Opera Digest.
Main Section
Interview
Newsday
by Connie Passalacqua, Published February 12, 1996
Thorsten Kaye, who joined One Life to Live as Irish literature professor/terrorist group fugitive Patrick Thornhart last fall, is what every soap casting director wishes for but stopped finding 10 years ago. He's a talented, stage-trained actor, capable of bringing his own definitive personality to his role. Plus, Kaye has a rough-hewn masculinity, which creates a decidedly non-male-model-esque screen look. Add the always intriguing foreign accent (Patrick's is Irish; Kaye is a native Englishman), and "OLTL" was off and running in creating the most original male soap hero in ages.
While Patrick may remind some OLTL viewers physically of Liam Neeson and spiritually of Errol Flynn, offstage the highly idiosyncratic Kaye seems to be like no one but himself. Funny and unaffected, he says he's still adjusting to the demands of center-stage stardom on a five-day-a-week soap opera.
"Patrick has studied poetry and he has read all these books, so he will talk in a certain way. Some days his speeches are written beautifully with exactly the language you want to say. And the next day, someone else will write it and you sound like a bloody idiot," says Kaye, making a fair assessment of the actor's challenge in a medium where daily episodes are scripted by alternating writers. Kaye says that he is thrilled to be playing such an unusual, atypical soap character. "I did a public appearance and all the fans were asking about the poetry on the show. Not who was sleeping with who."
Kaye's background also borders on the unusual. Born in London and educated in an American high school there, he came to America and studied both acting and physical education at California State University at San Diego. After a year as a high school PE teacher, and another playing rugby in Europe, he went to graduate school in Ohio to study theater. Part of his stage training was a year spent doing Shakespeare at an inner-city theater in Detroit. From Hamlet to Patrick, larger-than-life men seem to be Kaye's acting specialty.
"Do you think Patrick is too big for TV?" says the actor, who seems to like to ask questions as much as being questioned. No, not in a medium fueled on the romantic fantasies of women. "Really now? Right now all my fan mail is about the work and the relationships on the show. No one asks, 'Do you wear underwear?'"