actor
Personal Information
Born on July 15, 1966, in New York, NY; son of Christopher (an actor and director) and Maria (an actor) St. John; married once (marriage ended): children: Julian, Paris (daughter).
Education: Studied acting in Los Angeles.
Career
Began acting career as Christoff St. John on an episode of the ABC-TV sitcom Happy Days in 1974; first feature film appearance was The Champ (also as Christoff St. John), 1979; went on to guest on television shows such as A Different World, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, and Diagnosis Murder; other television film appearances include Roots: The Next Generations, 1979, Beulah Land, 1980, and Finish Line, 1989.
Life's Work
Kristoff St. John is part of an ensemble cast of one of the most highly rated daytime dramas, The Young and the Restless, which airs weekdays on CBS. St. John plays Neil Winters, an advertising executive, husband, and father. An actor since his childhood days, St. John has appeared in a number of television films, sitcoms, and dramas, but over two million fans tune in daily to follow the story of the Winters quartet on Y&R, a show that has become the most-watched soap opera among African American viewers.
Born Christoff St. John in 1966 in New York City, the actor is the son of parents who were both experienced stage and screen performers. His father, Christopher, appeared in Shaft, the early 1970s Richard Roundtree film, and went on to a career as a director; mother Maria St. John was a graduate of London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. St. John made his first television appearance at the age of seven in a show called That's My Mama, and in 1974 appeared in an episode of the popular ABC-TV sitcom Happy Days. He grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Los Angeles.
St. John's first feature film appearance was tearjerker boxing movie, The Champ, in 1979, for which he still used the original spelling of his name. He attended Calabasas and Nordhoff High Schools, and began studying acting in Los Angeles at several workshops, including the famed Actor's Studio. He continued to win steady work in television, playing a young Alex Haley in a 1979 miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations, as well as small-screen projects like An Innocent Love and The Atlanta Child Murders. In 1985, he appeared in NBC's Charlie & Company opposite comedian Flip Wilson and singer Gladys Knight. Over the next decade, he was frequently cast in guest appearances on top-rated shows like Cosby, A Different World, Living Single, Family Matters, and Pensacola. He was also offered recurring parts on Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Martin, and Diagnosis Murder.
In 1989, St. John was cast as Adam Marshall in an NBC soap opera, Generations. He earned two Emmy nominations as best supporting actor for his work. That success helped him land the role of Neil Winters on another daytime drama, The Young and the Restless, early in 1991. Since 1989, Y&R has been the highest-rated daytime drama among African Americans, and his character was slated to become part of a quartet of black characters who would prove extremely popular with the Y&R following. With six permanent residents of Genoa City, the fictional Midwestern city in which the daytime drama is set, the actors are the largest contingent of African American characters in daytime drama.
St. John's Winters was, initially, the stereotypical nice guy--an ambitious young man who begins working in the mailroom of an advertising agency, and soon rises through the ranks to an executive level. "Neil is so agreeable," St. John told Essence writer Deborah Gregory back in 1995. "It's much more interesting for an actor to play a character who has a dark, angry or combative side." Winters soon meets Drucilla Barber, a character played by Victoria Rowell, who is both streetwise and beautiful; initially they do not seem a likely pair. "Wondering if those two were ever going to come together was a lot of fun," St. John told Essence's Gregory. "At least now we are one of the few Black supercouples on the soaps with a continuous story line."
In the Y&R world, Drucilla has a sister, Olivia, played by Tonya Lee Williams. Her on-screen husband is another popular male actor, Shemar Moore. The quartet's racy romantic troubles provide the show's 2.3 million viewers with vicarious excitement. Moore plays Neil's formerly wild younger brother, Malcolm; the two had a troubled relationship growing up in Chicago, and Neil was dismayed when Malcolm arrived in Genoa City for a reconciliation. Drucilla, however, encouraged them to patch things up, and even helped Malcolm launch a lucrative career as a freelance photographer through her connections as a model.
Malcolm, true to Neil's presumptions about his brother's morals, soon found himself falling for Drucilla, who was now married to Neil. Malcolm visited her one day when she was sick and a double dose of cold medication had made her groggy; she embraced him, thinking it was Neil. Later, she became pregnant, and was unsure who the father of their child, Lily, really was. Meanwhile, Drucilla's sister, Olivia, lost her husband, and she and Malcolm became romantically involved. Yet Olivia--a doctor--harbored secret feelings for Neil. In time, Neil and Drucilla's marriage ended, and he became involved with Olivia. Throughout all these sibling and spousal conflicts, St. John's character has shed some of his nice-guy image, and speaks far more frankly.
"The four of us have a dynamic quality, we complement one another well," Tonya Lee Williams told Jet. "My and Victoria's characters are different, but together they spark. The same is true for Malcolm and Kristoff's characters. And the four of us together are buzzing." St. John consistently earns Daytime Emmy nominations as outstanding actor in a daytime drama series, but took the statue home only once, in 1992, for his Winters role. He is, however, a perennial winner in the same category for the NAACP Image Awards.
As a Y&R cast member, St. John has helped the daytime drama achieve impressive ratings numbers among African American viewers; the show is also popular with audiences in South Africa, Kenya, Jamaica, and other Caribbean nations. Some celebrities have even admitted their passion for tuning in to the travails of the Winters family, among them Aretha Franklin and Whoopi Goldberg.
St. John's decade-plus career in the daytime drama inspired him to create a web site, http://www.soapstarworld.com, which features gossip and insider information on all the network soaps. The father of two, St. John is also the principal in his own production company, Moonboy, which in the early 1990s developed and directed a pilot that became the CBS Soap Break. The actor produced and hosted several of the episodes. Through Moonboy, St. John hopes to produce a screenplay that he wrote, Café America.
Awards
Daytime Emmy, Outstanding Younger Actor in a daytime drama series, 1992, for his role as Neil Winters on The Young and the Restless; NAACP Image Award, 1996, for Outstanding Actor in a Daytime Drama Series.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Ebony, October 1992, p. 50.
- Essence, September 1995, p. 78.
- Jet, April 6, 1998, pp. 53-54.
— Carol Brennan
