What's It's Like to Grow Up On Daytime

Stars share their experiences of growing up on TV

“I think that it’s crazy that I can almost YouTube any age of mine,” marvels Kristen Alderson, who was only 6 when she began playing Starr Manning on ONE LIFE TO LIVE in 1998; she held the role through the show’s finale in 2012, then reprised Starr on GH from 2012-13, when she was 22. “If people want to see my awkward years, there’s a YouTube episode for that; if they want to see how little I was when I started on the show, my first episode is on YouTube. It’s kind of crazy that there’s like a YouTube archive of my whole life, and what I think is the coolest is that someone posted the other day, a woman runs my Facebook fan club and she posted a video montage of Starr through the years and it was all, like, Starr and Todd and Blair from when I was little through when I got older. And I watch it and think, ‘I lived a whole other life within my life.’ Like, I literally lived Starr’s life along with my life — it was like a double life! People ask me, ‘Oh, when you had that crying scene when you said good-bye to Todd, what were you thinking of when you cried?’ And I’m like, ‘I was literally thinking about not seeing Todd again.’ Like Todd was my dad! I wasn’t thinking of something else that happened in my life because that was my life, you know? It’s just so cool that I not only have, like, my first kiss as a memory, but Starr’s first kiss as a memory. I had a double first for everything in my life and I’m so grateful for that. I think it’s the coolest thing.” When Haley Pullos joined GH as Molly,