Here’s What the Cast of ‘The Young and the Restless’ Look Like Today

Stunning Eva Longoria shot to fame playing Gabrielle Solis on Desperate Housewives, which ran on ABC from 2004 to 2012. Yet before moving into Wisteria Lane, she lived in Genoa City, masterfully portraying evil, crazy nutjob Isabella Braña.

Eva once said “I feel like I’ve been very lucky in the roles I’ve played: Isabella, for example, was so complex, so full of anger and love at the same time.” Just one year after leaving Y&R, Eva landed her role on Desperate Housewives.

Eva Longoria is one of the most successful ex-Y&R actresses. She founded her own film and TV production company, UnbeliEVAble Entertainment, advertised for L’Oreal and Pepsi, and starred in films like The Sentinel, For Greater Glory, Frontera, Lowriders, and Overboard.

She also opened a Hollywood restaurant with her partner, celebrity chef Todd English. The mom of one boy has also released her own cookbooks and clothing line plus part-owns National Women’s Soccer League team Angel City FC.

In the 1980s, two mustaches ruled the airwaves. The first, of course, belonged to Hawaaiian Ferarri-driving private detective and ladies’ man, Magnum P.I., played by Hollywood hunk Tom Selleck. The only mustache that came close to Magnum’s was Robert Parucha’s.

If they had a mustache fight, Magnum would have beaten Parucha hands down. He played Victor Newman’s brother Matt Miller on Y&R between 1985 and 1987. Then he jumped ship to play Eddie Reed in The Days of Our Lives.

Before and after his residence on Y&R, Robert appeared in the original Dynasty, L.A. Law, The Client, Santa Barbara, and alongside ex-colleague The Hoff in Baywatch. In 2003 and 2020, he reprised his Matt Miller role.

Approaching 70, Parucha is married with three grown-up children. According to his Twitter profile, he is a Deacon, a dog lover, and a fan of playing beach volleyball when he gets the opportunity. It’s a tough life… being a soap opera actor!

Believe it or not, Tom Selleck also appeared on The Young and the Restless. He portrayed Jed Andrews from 1974 to 1975 before he could grow a mustache. But Y&R wasn’t his first screen role. After appearing as a contestant on The Dating Game in 1969, his first acting gig was playing a cowboy on the CBS Western Lancer the same year.

He found worldwide fame playing Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV between 1980 and 1988 and starred in Quigley Down Under in 1990. 

Did you know that Tom Selleck very nearly played Indiana Jones? He even screen-tested for the role but had to pass because he was filming Magnum. We love Tom, but we’re glad he didn’t play Indy. As one of the hunkiest actors of the 1980s, he appeared in Three Men and a Baby.

In the ’90s, he played Monica’s sugar daddy, Dr. Richard Burke, in Friends, and in more recent years, the near-80-year-old had a resurgence playing NYPD Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in the CBS police procedural Blue Bloods.

In the 1990s, Amelia Heinle played Stephanie “Steffi” Brewster on the ABC soap opera Loving and its spin-off, The City. The soapy stalwart has appeared on All My Children, CSI: Miami, and Ghost Whisperer.

She joined the cast of The Young and the Restless in 2005, playing ruthless Victor Newman’s daughter, Victoria Newman, and replacing Heather Tom in the role. Gorgeous Amelia made the role her own and hasn’t looked back, continuing to play Victoria until the present day.

Amelia has a penchant for marrying and divorcing her co-stars and on-screen boyfriends. In 1995, she married her Loving co-star and on-screen love interest, Michael Weatherly. She gave birth to their only child, August, in 1996 but divorced Weatherly the following year.

In 2007, she again married a co-star. This time, the lucky man was Y&R’s Thad Luckinbill, who played her on-screen ex-husband, J.T. Hellstrom. Together, they have a son, Thaddeus Rowe, and a daughter, Georgia, but divorced in 2017.

Speaking of Thaddeus Rowe Luckinbill, he played J.T. Hellstrom on the CBS soap opera for 11 years from 1999 to 2010. Thad also reprised the role in 2017 and 2023. But he nearly didn’t get the role because Thad has an identical twin brother, Trent, who was born just 12 minutes after him.

Imagine how upset he’d be if his twin brother won the role of J.T. and went on to marry Amelia Heinle. That would be unbelievable, even as a Y&R storyline!

Not that Thaddeus would have been too upset, because of all our Y&R male actors, he’s probably gone on to become the most successful. As an actor, he appeared in Nash Bridges, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Grey’s Anatomy, Nip/Tuck, Rizzoli and Isles, Ballers, and many more shows.

But he’s also become a major film producer, executive producing such massive movies as Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, the brilliant firefighting drama Only the Brave, and Reptile, starring Benicio Del Toro.

The longest-running Y&R actor is Eric Braeden. Born Hans-Jörg Gudegast in German Prussia in 1941, the four-year-old escaped war-torn Germany by surviving the sinking of the evacuee ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff. In 1959, he emigrated to the USA and changed his name to Eric Braeden.

In the ’60s, he arrived in Hollywood, seeking fame and fortune. His big break came in the ’60s spy series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. In 1980, Eric was cast as Victor Newman for 12 weeks and was meant to be quickly bumped off by his wife.

Yet Victor Newman was so popular that 44 years later, Eric still plays the sociopathic self-made businessman. The beloved villain is one of the most evil soap opera characters in history, and he’s been coming up with despicable plans for almost half a century.

Eric bagged a Daytime Emmy Award for playing Victor in 1998. In 2023, while recovering from knee-replacement surgery, doctors discovered 81-year-old Eric had bladder cancer, but four months later, he revealed he was cancer-free.

Sharon Case has been on the show almost as long as Eric Braeden. She first played Sharon Newman in 1994, and the character — who grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks” — was only meant to appear for six months.

30 years later, Sharon Newman became a mother, a businesswoman, and a central figure in Genoa City. Strong yet vulnerable, Sharon’s most controversial storyline was her 2012 romance with her former father-in-law, Victor Newman, which, of course, sparked outrage among Y&R fans.

Over the years, Sharon became the first-ever soap opera actress to grace the cover of FHM magazine. In 2010, the Detroit, Michigan native released her own jewelry line. From 2019 to 2002, she dated her Y&R co-star, Mark Grossman, who plays Adam Newman, one of her character’s ex-flames on the soap.

In 2023, Sharon Case was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Sharon Newman.

Melissa Claire Egan has been a familiar face in daytime television for decades. She started out with bit parts in Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill but became famous for playing Annie Lavery on All My Children from 2006 to 2011.

That same year, she began playing Chelsea Lawson on The Young and the Restless. Melissa played reformed bad girl and con artist Chelsea until 2018, when she left the role, announcing “goodbye for now” on her social media.

Television magazines and websites reported that producers would leave the door open for the popular actress to return. So it was no surprise that, within 15 months, Melissa reprised her role on the show.

In June 2019, Chelsea Lawson returned to America’s most loved soap opera. In her personal life, Melissa married Matt Katrosar, the CEO of HC2 Broadcasting, in 2014. The couple live in Los Angeles with their sons, Caden and Jake, and their dog, Sophia.

Gregory Andrew Rikaart first made a name for himself, playing Leo Stark on Days of Our Lives and appearing on Dawson’s Creek. In 2003, he was cast as Kevin Fisher on The Young and the Restless and has been there ever since.

But he nearly made his escape in 2017. That May, Greg confirmed he would be exiting the soap. However, by August, Y&R’s official Twitter account confirmed Rikaart was back taping the show.

Greg has since spread his wings, appearing in shows like The Closer, CSI: Miami, and Bones. However, he’s never given up his soap opera foundations, reprising his role as Days of Our Lives’ Leo Stark several times since 2018, somehow managing to juggle concurrent roles on not one, but two of the biggest soap operas.

In real life, Rikaart married Texan writer, producer, and actor Robert Sudduth in Hawaii in 2015. The happy couple had their first child, a son named Montgomery, via surrogacy the following year.

Phyllis Summers first appeared in Genoa City in 1994 when she showed up as a groupie of fictional rock singer Danny Romalotti and claimed to have given birth to his child. Michelle Stafford played the part until 1997 when Sandra Nelson replaced her for three years.

Then, Michelle won her role back from 2000 until 2013, when Gina Tognoni replaced her. But then, after Gina had played for five years until June 2019, Stafford re-claimed the role until the present day. How confusing is that?

In her time away, Michelle played the protagonist in Aaron Spelling’s short-lived soap opera Pacific Palisades, appeared in General Hospital, Two Guys and a Girl, Diagnosis: Murder, ​​Frasier, Charmed, and JAG, and starred opposite Ashley Judd in the 1999 thriller Double Jeopardy.

The multi-talented writer and producer has also been a hockey correspondent and released her own skincare line and web series, The Stafford Project. Michelle had a daughter, Natalia Scout Lee Stafford, born via surrogacy in 2009, and a son, Jameson, in 2015.

No relation to Friends’ actor Matt LeBlanc, Christian LeBlanc played quirky legal eye Michael Baldwin from the dysfunctional Baldwin family from 1991 to 1993. He returned after a four-year break in 1997 and has remained in the role since.

Michael Baldwin has dated or married half of Genoa City, having been married to Hilary Lancaster and Lauren Fenmore, with whom he has a fictional son, Fenmore Baldwin. The character also had a relationship with Christine Blair, played by Lauralee Bell.

Now in his mid-sixties, LeBlanc is one of Y&R’s longest-running actors, appearing on the show constantly since his 1997 return. He’s also appeared on As the World Turns, In the Heat of the Night, and Diagnosis: Murder.

Christian also appeared alongside his on-screen wife Tracey E. Bregman in Reba McEntire’s 2010 “I Keep On Loving You” music video. In June 2021, Christian shocked the world when he revealed on Maurice Benard’s podcast State of Mind that he has been married to his husband, Sid Montz, for 28 years.

Did you know that Vivica A. Fox also appeared on The Young and the Restless? She played Stephanie Simmons for a year in 1994. But Y&R wasn’t her big break; she first appeared on Soul Train in 1982, had roles on Days of Our Lives, Generations, and starred opposite Patti LaBelle in the NBC sitcom Out All Night.

Within a year of leaving Y&R, Vivica starred opposite Will Smith in Independence Day and in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

Vivica Anjanetta Fox once dated 50 Cent and appeared in the movies Booty Call, Soul Food, and Kingdom Come. Yet nowadays, she’s one of America’s favorite actresses, producers, and television hosts. In 2020, she starred in Arkansas alongside Liam Hemsworth and John Malkovich.

More recently, she appeared on The Masked Singer. And somehow, she’s just as vivacious (see what we did there?) now as she was back when she played Stephanie Simmons when Boyz II Men were topping the charts!

Child star Camryn Grimes first appeared as Cassie Newman in 1997 when she was just seven. Three years later, the 10-year-old actress became the youngest-ever winner of the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series. She played Cassie from 1997 to 2005, when her character passed away in a car wreck.

Yet, somehow, Cassie appeared many times after that. But, how can this be so? Well, Camryn reprised Cassie’s role as a ghost! Only William Shakespeare and daytime soap operas could get away with that plotline!

But then, in 2014, Camryn Grimes was recast in Y&R as Mariah Copeland, who looked just like Cassie Newman. The writers eventually revealed that Mariah Copeland was, in fact, Cassie’s long-lost twin sister, which is also reminiscent of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.

After growing up before fans’ eyes, she won another Daytime Emmy Award in 2018. In real life, Camryn is married to voice-over actor Brock Powell, and they welcomed their first son, Bridger Elias Foster, to the world in December 2023.

After making his screen debut in Will and Grace, child star Penn Badgley became famous for playing Phillip Chancellor IV on The Young and the Restless. Phillip was, unsurprisingly, the son of Nina Webster and Phillip Chancellor III. Various child actors portrayed Philip IV from 1988 to 2001.

After Penn Badgley, actor John Driscoll portrayed the role from 2009 to 2011. At the time, Penn wanted to become a pop singer, but the 13-year-old was so popular and such a good actor that he earned a Young Artist Award nomination.

Penn went on to have a respectable career as an actor. He appeared in the movies Drive-Thru and Cymbeline and played Jeff Buckley in Greetings from Tim Buckley.

On TV, you may have seen him playing Dan Humphrey in The CW teen drama Gossip Girl and Joe Goldberg in Netflix’s stalker thriller series You. He dated Gossip Girl co-star Blake Lively and actress Zoë Kravitz before marrying singer Domino Kirke in 2014. The couple had their first son in August 2020.

Eddie Cibrian played bad boy Matt Clark in Y&R for 29 episodes from 1994 to 1996. The character was your average high school jock until he turned nasty, violently attacking Sharon Newman. Regarding Matt Clark’s vicious streak, Eddie stated at the time, “Unfortunately, there are people in the world like Matt.

That’s why they put this in the script, so people could be aware.” Russell Lawrence briefly played the character in 2000 before Rick Hearst took over the role and departed in 2001 after the writers bumped Matt Clark off.

Since leaving the soap, Eddie went on to play Cole Deschanel on the television series Sunset Beach and Jimmy Doherty on Third Watch. He also played Jesse Cardoza in CSI: Miami, Russell Varon in Invasion, and Eddie Valetik in Take Two.

Eddie married model and reality television star Brandi Glanville in 2001, and they have two sons, Mason and Jake. However, they divorced in 2009 after Eddie had an affair with country music singer LeAnn Rimes while the two were making the movie Northern Lights. Cibrian and Rimes married in 2011.

Kristoff St. John was famous before his long stint on The Young and the Restless. He appeared on Happy Days and Wonder Woman and played the young Alex Haley on Roots: The Next Generations.

Between 1989 and 1991, he appeared in over 200 episodes of Generations, a short-lived soap opera that was the first to feature an African American family. The good-looking and talented actor took on the Y&R role of Neil Winters in 1991 and played him until 2019.

While appearing in his long-running soap role, Kristoff appeared on many shows, such as The Jamie Foxx Show, Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, and Everybody Hates Chris. Sadly, Kristoff is no longer with us.

He played Neil Winters for 28 years until he tragically and unexpectedly passed away from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in February 2019. His passing came just a year after he became engaged to Russian model Kseniya Olegovna Mikhaleva. He was just 52 years old.

It must be nice knowing that you are good enough at your job and loved by the public so much that you can inhabit a role for almost four decades. That’s how long Jess Walton has played Jill Abbott on The Young and the Restless.

Brenda Dickson and Deborah Adair first played Jill before Jess started rocking ’80s hair in 1987. In that time, the savvy, manipulative businesswoman has seen thousands of Genoa City residents come and go, and Jess Walton has picked up two Daytime Emmy Awards.

Before her Y&R role, Jess Walton’s resume reads like a Who’s Who of popular TV shows. She appeared in everything from Gunsmoke, Ironside, Kojak, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Starsky & Hutch. She also appeared in The Return of the Muskrats in 2006!

Jess was married to author and The Grief Recovery Institute founder John James from 1980 until he passed away in August 2021. They had two children, Cole and Allison. Now 75, she continues to be a Y&R icon.

Did you know that David Hasselhoff’s first major role before he conquered the world came on The Young and the Restless? The hairy-chested, permed actor played Dr. William “Snapper” Foster Jr. between 1975 and 1982. Next, he found global fame as Michael Knight on Knight Rider and Mitch Buchanan on Baywatch.

As a singer, The Hoff was huge in Germany and single-handedly (in his mind, anyway) brought down The Berlin Wall. On New Year’s Eve 1989, he performed his single “Looking for Freedom” in Berlin… two months after the wall fell.

Fast forward to the 21st Century, and Hasselhoff has appeared on Dancing with the Stars and has been a judge on America’s and Britain’s Got Talent. His worst moment came in 2007 when his daughter, Taylor Ann, shamed him into sobriety after filming him eating a hamburger off the floor.

In 2008, he reprised his role as Michael Knight in Knight Rider 2008, and two years later, he reprised his role as Dr. Snapper Foster in Y&R. He also had a significant part in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!

So, who wins a chicken dinner for appearing on The Young and the Restless’ longest-running cast member? Well, Doug Davidson has to be up there, as he first played Paul Williams in 1978 and continued until 2020.

Doug actually left Y&R for a year in 2018, when new British exec producer Mal Young took the show in an exciting new direction and wrote out several long-running characters — before returning in a recurring role the following year. We make that a total of 41 years.

Over his long Y&R career, Doug won a plethora of Soap Opera Digest Awards and has been nominated for many Daytime Emmys, winning Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2013. He also hosted host The New Price Is Right in 1994.

Now pushing 70 years old, Doug has been married in real life almost as long as he appeared in Y&R. He married actress Cindy Fisher in 1984, and the couple have two children, a daughter called Calyssa and a son named Caden.

Born in 1973, the late great Paul Walker got his start in television early. When he was just two years old, he starred in a television commercial for Pampers diapers. As a child actor, he appeared in such seminal TV shows as Highway to Heaven, Charles in Charge, and Who’s The Boss?

But in 1992, Paul got his big break playing Brandon Collins in The Young and the Restless. Roles in Pleasantville, Varsity Blues, She’s All That, and The Skulls won him plaudits, leading to greater roles.

In 2002, Paul appeared opposite Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious. The high-octane car movie was so popular that it spawned nine sequels so far, even taking its cast into space.

But on November 30th, 2013, when Paul was filming Fast & Furious 7, the Porsche he was traveling in crashed into a lamppost and two trees in Valencia, Santa Clarita, California. The car burst into flames, and Paul and the driver, Roger Rodas, both lost their lives. Rest in peace, Paul.