It was no surprise back in 2008 that upon the cancellation of daytime soap Passions that Days Of Our Lives would bring some of the more talented and popular actors and actresses over to inject some new blood into the fictional town of Salem. One of those actors was tall, dark and handsome actor Galen Gering, who plays Rafe Hernandez and has proven to be one of the most popular characters on the long-running daytime serial. While audiences immediately welcomed Gering into the DOOL fold, it was Gering’s immediate chemistry with Sami Brady (Alison Sweeney) that has cemented his presence on the NBC soap.
I had the chance to sit down with Gering on the NBC lot in Burbank and talk his pre-acting days, the differences between Passions and Days and whether he’d want his own kids to follow in his thespian footsteps.
Jim Halterman: You started your career fairly young. Though you started modeling, was acting always the goal?
Galen Gering: When I was 17, I got discovered by this talent agent and he thought that I could potentially do certain things. I did some photo shoots and then I got what was called a direct booking for a big campaign in Italy, which shot in Africa. This was at the same time I was actually registered to go to UCLA and I was like “Oh my God, do I go to UCLA or am I going to go to Africa?’ I saw myself riding on this elephant but what turned out happening was it turned out to be North Africa and we had just bombed Tunisia and they hated me. They wanted to kill me and I got surrounded in this Indiana Jones village and I thought I was going to get torn limb by limb. The rest is history but I did end up graduating with a double major in producing and directing film as well as writing.
Want to read the full interview? Go to: http://jimhalterman.com/interviews/one-on-one-with-days-of-our-lives-heroic-galen-gering/