Former UH star athlete now plays on ABC soap

By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer

By day, Jason Olive lives in mythical Pine Valley. He is Dr. Frank Hubbard, son of one of daytime TV's most beloved couples. Seemingly minutes after getting to town, he became involved in an on-again, off-again relationship with former patient Simone. He is also the father of Mia's child, though he doesn't know it.

Jason Olive smiles as he warms up in the locker room before an UH alumni volleyball game at Stan Sheriff Arena. The actor/model stars on ABC's "All My Children." Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

He has published a book of his own poetry ("Balancing the Limbo") and is writing a screenplay ("They Call Me Quick") with a friend — also his martial-arts master — who worked on "Rush Hour" and "Rush Hour 2." Olive characterizes it as "Austin Powers" meets "Rush Hour."

His innate gift for making jeans and a T-shirt appear elegant, and a nearly flawless 6-foot-4 frame, means he is still in demand as a model. But the occasional catalog and show are nothing like the $250,000 contract he gave up in 1995 to play volleyball his senior year at the University of Hawai'i. Or the Versace contract he accepted that summer, much to the chagrin of the U.S. national team.

Why haven't he and fiancée Kandi Antillon set a date?

"We're still trying to get a couch," Olive says with a tired grin.

Antillon accepted his ring in May. A month later "All My Children" offered him the part. His character was last seen as 5-year-old Little Frankie, son of Angie and Jesse.

It is Olive's third soap opera (after "Guiding Light" and "Passions"), but this time he has a four-year contract and a promise that he will have a "busier winter than summer."

It hasn't been all that slow: "You go from a love scene to, the next day, saving someone's life," Olive says, "You're in a fist fight, and the next day you're talking to your father's ghost."

His colleagues include Susan Lucci, soaps' most famous face, and David Canary, the man Olive used to run home to watch, first on "Bonanza" and then on AMC.

Back then, Olive dreamed of being a Renaissance man. His heroes are Emerson and Laurence Olivier, Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, John Lennon and Bob Marley.

He studied hard enough to be accepted to Ivy League schools, but chose Hawai'i so he could play volleyball. He's been in the Islands because Sears flew him in for an appearance Saturday, and Olive came early to play in the Nov. 1 alumni match.

When Olive lived here, he stayed at the Johnson Hall dorm. Now he sleeps at the Kahala Mandarin. He has gone from All-American, helping the Rainbows to their first final four, to movies and television.

The only constant in that time has been a modeling career that has taken Olive all over the world for Armani, Versace, Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent, Banana Republic, Levis, Gap and Ralph Lauren. He was discovered in line at a Los Angeles nightclub in 1992 and worked as much as the NCAA allowed during his UH career.

He graduated with degrees in literature and theater and the Jack Bonham Award — the most prestigious honor in the athletic department. He modeled almost exclusively, exploiting an intriguing mix of African, German, Jewish, Irish and Chippewa Indian blood and a soft-spoken charm.

"The industry wears on you after a while," Olive says. "It was very bizarre for me. All of a sudden everyone sees you as this model. For me, I didn't have any money, and my parents weren't going to send me to Europe after college, so it was a way to go trip around before I got a real job.

"Three, four years later you're like, wait a minute, where did the real job thing go? I got a little nervous and thought this isn't what I want to do with my life. And, of course, you have a very short shelf life in that job."

Olive began to find work in television, then movies. He acted with James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman in "The Feast of All Saints" adaptation of Anne Rice's book.

Then "All My Children," which had wanted to bring Frank Hubbard back for years, lost three of its hottest young stars (the characters of Ryan, Leo and Matteo) in rapid succession.

"They really needed some guys on the show," Olive said. "The 'hunk factor,' I guess. They had a lot of single women on the show, which doesn't make for interesting daytime."

Olive had not enjoyed his first two daytime TV experiences. He credits his acting teacher for helping him "understand the genre" of what is essentially melodrama.

It helps that the set of AMC is anything but melodramatic. Over its long history, it has developed what Olive calls a "family atmosphere." He found Lucci, who plays diva Erica Kane, gracious and personable. In other words, everything her character is not.

"I think you find it's so much easier to play a bad character when you're not," says Olive, whose own character has the integrity of his parents, with a hint of temper. "You just go, 'What is everything I would hate?' You just get it all out of your system."

Olive works an average of three days a week now. They are warp-speed 15-hour days. The hourlong show has an 85-page script, about the same as weekly shows. It plays for 3 1/2 million people daily.

"Every mistake, you wish you could take it back," Olive says. "But on a soap opera there isn't a lot of time to do it twice and usually, you don't."

It is a serious job where people make serious money. Starting pay is $100,000 annually for 78 shows. Most actors do more shows and negotiate more money.

If that doesn't change their life, the recognition will. The day Olive's first show aired, he was stopped three times on the street by strangers who just wanted to say, "Hi, Frankie."

Angie and Jesse were loved. Even after a 20-year absence, Little Frankie was not forgotten.

"I went home and told Kandi," Olive recalls, "things are going to be a little different."

Flight attendants now quiz him about his love life — will he stay with Simone or hook up with Mia? — in Pine Valley. His wife-to-be, an optician, reads lines with him. His mother is happy. She always wanted her son to be a doctor.

It is a long way from Johnson Hall, but Olive traces much of what he has now back here.

"We're thinking about coming back to Hawai'i for the wedding," he says. "This is where I did most of my growing up. When I got here, it was so eye-opening to be with so many different cultures, and to be on my own and be so embraced by the people here. In L.A., people get in their car and go. There was no sense of community. I'd never seen anything like this. I've missed that."