Van Hansis: Being An Open Book Is The Best Way To Go

WE LOVE SOAPS TV recently traveled to Los Angeles and spoke with three-time Emmy nominee Van Hansis, best known to soap fans for his run as Luke Snyder on AS THE WORLD TURNS. He's currently starring in the soon to be released film, Occupant, a thriller that tells the story of his character, Danny Hill. In addition to what aired during the episode featuring Hansis, the actor also spoke about his career aspirations and how he doesn't limit himself to any one genre or specific roles.

WE LOVE SOAPS TV: When you started at Carnegie Mellon, what were your aspirations? Did you want to do everything - theater, film?
Van Hansis: Carnegie Mellon is a classic drama school so you're main focus is theater. You do a little bit of film and television stuff in your senior year but for the most part it's theater, it's Shakespeare, the Greeks, it's learning different styles of theater, all this voice and speech stuff, so it's very, very theater-oriented. I feel like I have very big aspirations. But I've never been one to pinpoint my aspirations.

In my eyes, being an open book is the best way to go in this business and giving yourself permission to carve out your own future based on what you get cast in, and what the response from other people is. I went to New York after college and a lot of that was because there was theater there. But I soon found out I was having more response to my first big job, which was the soap. It's not that it's more one of the other, or any specific genre I want to work in. I want to work everywhere and have the ability to do some theater and a TV show. It's really whatever comes my way.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Watch the rest of the Van Hansis interview below on WE LOVE SOAPS TV.