On- and off-screen, loyalty is all the pieces for “General Hospital” star Maurice Benard, 60.
For 3 a long time, he’s played mob boss Sonny Corinthos on the long-lasting ABC soap opera, but he initially feared it might be a brief gig.
“After I first began … I had my third manic episode,” Benard, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 22, told The Post.
“So it sticks in my head how loyal and incredible they weren’t to fireside me. If I need to go away or something, I at all times take into consideration that point.”
Benard has won three Daytime Emmys in his a long time on the show, which is the longest-running scripted drama on TV.
On Saturday, it celebrates its sixtieth anniversary.
Viewers first checked into “General Hospital” on April 1, 1963, and Benard and his castmates are still stirring up love — and drama — every weekday afternoon within the fictional upstate Latest York town of Port Charles.
The prescription for achievement is “loads of exertions” and “fans who’re more loyal than any fans in the entire world,” in keeping with Benard.
The actor first tuned into “GH” — because the show is understood by its diehard fans — as an adolescent.
“I watched it after I was sick after I was about 13,” he said. “I watched ‘All My Children’ and ‘General Hospital,’ and I ended up being on each shows.”
He got his start on “All My Children,” appearing on that now-defunct ABC soap as bad boy Nico Kelly from 1987 to 1990. Three years later, he headed to “General Hospital.”
When he was offered the selection to play one among two gangsters on the show — dimpled Brooklynite Sonny Corinthos or nepo-baby mobster Damian Smith — he selected Sonny.
“I said, ‘Ah, that’s a cool name!’”
It wasn’t meant to be a 30-year job.
“It was actually a six-month contract,” said Benard, whose character was initially more of a villain than an antihero.
“After which I made a decision to remain, and I made some different selections as an actor for the character, and the audience began to like him.”
“General Hospital” hit its pop-culture heights with the marriage of Luke (Anthony Geary) and Laura (Genie Francis) in 1981.
Sonny became half of his own soap supercouple later within the ’90s, because the dark and dangerous older man seducing trust-fund diva Brenda (Vanessa Marcil).
He was initially hesitant concerning the plot twist.
“I didn’t feel like we were ready yet to be that supercouple because I assumed that Vanessa wasn’t all that strong as an actress yet,” he said. “So I took Vanessa under my wing, and she or he worked her butt off, and she or he became an incredible actress.”
After Marcil left “GH” to pursue a prime-time TV profession, going from “Beverly Hills, 90210” to “Las Vegas,” the Sonny and Brenda era faded.
Still, Benard’s alter ego — who also has bipolar disorder — found supercouple chemistry again with scheme queen Carly, who has been played by multiple actresses, including Sarah Joy Brown, Tamara Braun and currently Laura Wright.
“But there was one which didn’t work,” he said of Jennifer Bransford, who briefly played Carly in 2005 before she was fired.
However the “GH” love interest Benard wishes he would have had but never did is Demi Moore, who played Jackie Templeton on the soap from 1982 to 1984.
Still, it’s been an important run.
And after years of being a soap heartthrob, Los Angeles-based Benard — who has 4 children together with his wife of 33 years, Paula Smith — is embracing his age, including his gray hair.
“Sometimes my hairdresser paints just a little more, sometimes less,” he said with fun. “It’s what it’s.”
Just don’t ask him to do any of the torso-baring love scenes he was once known for.
“I don’t wish to do those,” Benard said. “I’m kinda over that.”
