The Small-Town Boy
Tyler Christopher was born in Joliet, Illinois, but he was raised in Delaware, Ohio, not far from the city of Columbus. Tyler describes home "a very small, Midwestern, conservative kind of country little town. It's one of those places if you blink, you'll miss it."

Sounds like the kind of place where people raise com, not soap opera stars, right! As a matter of fact, Tyler says that when he was growing up, acting "never crossed my mind. Not one bit." He wanted to be a baseball player.

Tyler's childhood was textbook normal. Unlike the only-child character of Nikolas Cassadine, whom he plays every day on General Hospital, Tyler grew up with lots of sibs. He's the youngest of four, and he freely admits he was the troublemaker of the bunch. Luckily, his brother and his two sisters made sure he didn't get into too much trouble. To this day, Tyler says his older brother is his hero.

Tyler's parents put great stock in education. His mom works at Ohio Wesleyan University. His dad is an engineer. His brothers and sisters all went on to college and became teachers. So you can imagine his parents' surprise (and dismay!) when Tyler packed his bags and left for Hollywood after only two years as an economics major at Ohio Wesleyan University.

"It wasn't that I was doing badly," Tyler explains. "I was a good student. But you just know when something's not right for you. I had a cousin who knew that he wanted to be an actor all his life. He moved to Los Angeles right out of high school. He said to me, 'Maybe you should give acting a try.' Seeing that he was having some moderate success, I thought maybe I could make it, too. "

But that Hollywood brass ring is pretty tough to grab on to. After just two months, Tyler packed his bags again and headed for home.

"I really didn't give it a chance," he says now.

Tyler didn't go back to school. He spent his time bartending in Columbus, and working construction. He also ran up a pretty hefty credit card bill. "I really hurt myself in the past getting into debt," Tyler acknowledges. "I went in my mailbox ... and there was a preapproved credit card with my name on it. It looked like gold to me. It was crazy, when you think about it. I mean, how could I get one? I didn't even have a job. It didn't dawn on me that they give everyone one."

Charge! Soon Tyler was buying things all over town. "It buried me," he admits. Tyler charged so much he spent many of his first year's GH paychecks paying back creditors.

Los Angeles, Take 2
It didn't take Tyler long to realize that he had made a big mistake leaving Los Angeles. "I was so miserable, unclear and unfocused about my life," he recalls. "I had no skills and no direction. People thought that I was lazy, but that wasn't it. I was searching for my dream."

That, dream finally led him back to L.A. And this time, Tyler was determined to stick it out.

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