Susan Seaforth Hayes - Career

Career

Susan Seaforth grew up in Hollywood; her mother, Elizabeth Harrower (1918–2003), was an actress and writer who eventually became a part of the writing team of The Young and the Restless. Her father, Harry Seabold, lived with his bride for 90 days during World War II, through his basic training near Oklahoma City. He shipped out after his daughter was conceived and remained overseas for 33 months; during this time, Harrower returned to her family home in Berkeley.

Seaforth Hayes had a number of featured roles on primetime television in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s including The Fugitive, at least two appearances on My Three Sons, plus episodes of Emergency!, Adam-12, the 1967 - 70 version of Dragnet, and Matlock, and was active in theater as a teenager, but is best known for her role as Julie Olson Williams on the soap opera Days of our Lives. She played the role continuously from 1968 to 1984 and again from 1990 to 1993, with recurring appearances in 1994 and 1996. Since 1999, she has appeared on the show in a recurring capacity.

She earned a degree in history from L.A's City College, and the stack of books at her deskside reflects an intense interest in the American West and diverse Native American cultures. Seaforth Hayes has lectured at universities in Los Angeles and Boston.

Her onscreen and real-life romance with co-star Bill Hayes (Doug Williams) was widely covered by both the soap opera magazines and the mainstream press (they married in 1974). The characters of Doug and Julie were Days of our Lives as well as daytime TV's 's first supercouple, and are widely believed to be the first supercoupling on the American daytime serials. Their appearance together on the January 12, 1976 cover of Time magazine was the first time daytime actors had appeared there.

As of March 2010, she is the only actor to appear on Days of Our Lives in all six decades that it has been in production. In between roles, she starred as JoAnna Manning, mother to Tracey E. Bregman's character, Lauren Fenmore, on The Young and the Restless and as District Attorney Patricia Steele on Sunset Beach in that show's final months on the air.

In 2005, she and Hayes published their joint autobiography, Like Sands Through The Hourglass.

The role of Stephanie Forrester on The Bold and the Beautiful was created for her by former Days headwriter William J. Bell. When she turned it down, her former Days costar Susan Flannery took the role.