General Hospital’s Michael Easton Pays Tribute to the Late Co-Star Who Taught Him ‘a Great Deal About Acting and, More Importantly, About Life’
“Feeling a weight in my heart with the passing of Wings Hauser,” Michael Easton shared on social media. Before he made his soap debut on Days of Our Lives, starred on One Life to Live, Port Charles and General Hospital, back “in 1989, Wings gave me my first break as an actor, casting me in a low-budget feature that he directed and starred in called Cold Fire.
“If any of you have seen my work in this movie, I am very sorry,” he added. “Until then, all I had done was theater in New York, and it was my first time working in front of a camera. I had no idea what I was doing. I remember being in a casting office with dozens of other actors, and Wings passed by me and asked, ‘Can you act, kid?’ I lied and told him I could.”
Hauser, who passed through daytime himself as Greg Foster on The Young and the Restless, seemed to have a knack for spotting talent, however raw it may have been. “Wings also cast Kamar de los Reyes to play my half brother in the movie, and this is how we met and became lifelong friends” long before becoming One Life to Live castmates. “The budget was next to nothing, and the whole movie was shot in 11 days. Every night after shooting, Kamar and I would take my motorcycle or the bus — neither of us had a car — to Chinatown where we were staying in one of the producers’ apartments while they were out of town. (It was the kind of movie that even the producer didn’t want to be around.)
“We’d scrape together enough money to buy a box of Pop Tarts and a six-pack of beer, and we’d sit on the fourth-floor fire escape and just talk until the sun came up,” he continued. “It’s a time in my life I’ll always remember, and Wings is someone I will never forget. He was a true original. Wings was always kind to me, and I learned a great deal about acting and, more importantly, about life from him. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family, friends and all his fans. Rest in power, brother.”
