Scott Bryce, who received two Daytime Emmy nominations for his turn as Craig Montgomery on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns and portrayed Leslie Bibb’s dad on The WB series Popular, has died. He was 68.
Bryce died Sunday in New Haven, Connecticut, after a battle with esophageal and stomach cancer, his son, Jackson Bryce, told The New York Times. He had been diagnosed with cancer in October 2024 and opened up about his health issues with Alan Locher on an episode of The Locher Room last year.
Bryce also showed up on six episodes from 1990-92 as Will Forrest, the husband of Faith Ford’s Corky Sherwood, on CBS’ Murphy Brown.
The New York native originated the role of the antihero Craig on As the World Turns in January 1982 and stuck around through May 1987 for the first of his five stretches on the show (also 1988-89, 1990, 1993-94 and 2007-08, when he was fired).
“The plots on the show are so much darker than they used to be — dead babies, pornography, methamphetamines — and maybe I didn’t fit into that vision,” he said shortly after he was let go. “It’s not the ATWT I remember from those many years ago.”
Executive producer Chris Goutman “would say to me, ‘This is your character, run with it,’” he added. “But when I did, he never seemed pleased. Craig, as I understood him, has a need for family and love and fulfillment, and at all costs, which is what creates all the mayhem and madness in his life. Yes, he’s a villain, but he doesn’t know that.”
Bryce was initially paired onscreen with Meg Ryan’s Betsy Stewart Craig, and his character often tussled with Lucinda Walsh (Elizabeth Hubbard) in the town of Oakdale. For his efforts, he was nominated for outstanding lead actor in a drama series at the Daytime Emmys in 1986 and ’87.
As Mike McQueen, the hapless father of Bibb’s Brooke McQueen, Bryce appeared on all 43 episodes of Popular, which was created by Ryan Murphy and Gina Matthews and ran for two seasons (1999-2001). Mike hooks up with Lisa Darr’s Jane McPherson, mother of Sam McPherson (Carly Pope), and that sets the show’s storyline in motion.
One of three boys, Scott Macalister Bryce was born in New York on Jan. 6, 1958. His father, Ed Bryce, played Capt. Steve Strong on the 1950s kids TV show Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and, on and off from 1959-83, Bill Bauer on the CBS soap The Guiding Light. His mother, Dorothy Bryce, was a soap actor (The Doctors, Guiding Light) as well.
Bryce attended Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, and the Juilliard School, and in 1977 he played a Roman solider on Broadway in Caesar & Cleopatra, starring Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Ashley.
In 1988, he recurred on the ninth and final season on NBC’s The Facts of Life as musician Rick Bonner, who marries Nancy McKeon’s Jo Polniaczek. He then played lawyer James Pavlik on L.A Law on four episodes from 1991-93 and Sen. Tom Wesley on six installments of CBS’ Beacon Hill from 2014-20.
His TV résumé also included a stint as Dr. Ed Crosby on ABC’s One Life to Live in 2006 and primetime guest-star turns on The Golden Girls, Who’s the Boss?, Homicide: Life on the Street, Sex and the City, Judging Amy, ER, 30 Rock, Homeland, Chicago P.D., Blue Bloods and Law & Order.
In addition to his son, survivors include his wife, Jodi Stevens, an actress (Broadway’s Jekyll & Hyde) and voice teacher whom he married in 2003; his brothers, David and Phil; and a niece, Heather.
