Jack Wagner Says Fans Still Call Him This Iconic General Hospital Character’s Name More Than a Decade After Leaving the Show

Jack Wagner has come a long way from General Hospital to the family-friendly fare of When Calls the Heart.

But as the actor told fellow Melrose Place alumni Courtney Thorne-Smith, Daphne Zuniga and Laura Leighton on the most recent episode of their Still the Place podcast, fans still recognize him as his character from the classic ABC soap opera.

“That was kinda my big break,” Wagner, 65, said. “And that fan base of that soap opera is still there. You know, I still get called Frisco probably more than [anything else].”

Wagner made his debut on General Hospital in January 1984, playing rock singer turned spy Andrew “Frisco” Jones Jr. until the character’s disappearance in September 1988. He returned to the show the following summer, however, playing the character for another two years.

Wagner was back in the show’s fictional town of Port Charles, N.Y., by 1994, but left General Hospital again a year later, with his character choosing to continue fighting crime around the world rather than remain with ex-wife Felicia (Kristina Wagner, the actor’s real-life spouse at the time) and their two children. Nearly a decade later, Wagner returned to the show once again for a 2013 storyline.

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The role of Frisco earned Wagner a 1985 Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series. Between stints on General Hospital, Wagner took on the role of Dr. Peter Burns in Melrose Place from 1994 to the series’ finale in 1999, and starred as Nick Marone in The Bold and the Beautiful from 2003 to 2012. Since 2014, he’s starred opposite Lori Loughlin in The Hallmark Channel’s When Calls the Heart, which will air its 12th season finale on March 23.

While the Hallmark series is a far cry from the melodrama of his soapier work, the actor compared When Calls the Heart’s passionate fanbase to that of General Hospital.

“As you guys know, when a fanbase, you know, starts to fall in love with the characters, it's very real for them,” he said on Still the Place. “And it reminds me a little bit of the GH fans back in the ’80s.”