Jack Wagner shares what soap roles really took from him

Jack Wagner recently got candid and opened up about his “bad habits” he picked up during his long run in the soap opera world.

The 65-year-old American actor and singer conversed with PEOPLE magazine as he returns this week to The Bold and the Beautiful to play Nick Marone, which he depicted from 2003 to 2012. Before that, he portrayed Frisco Jones on General Hospital, starting in 1983.

Wagner admitted that acting in soap operas is “great for memorization,” as actors learn several pages of dialogue in a day.

He explained, “I think it's also great if you're trained enough to understand what it takes to have a believable performance in a very short time. And sometimes you can get script changes right before a scene.”

Notably, many actors begin their acting careers by performing in soap operas first, but The Wedding March star quipped, “I don't necessarily agree that it's such a great training ground.”

Expanding on this, he said, “What I don't like about it is that you can develop bad habits that you lean on as an actor.”

Wagner confessed that “you want to create moments,” but sometimes that stops an actor from “being still or being just in the moment.”

The Echo star explained that those who perform in soaps can “lean on inflections” or “lean on words or phrases that really aren't in the dialogue because there's so much to do in such a short period of time.”

“Those are the habits I really had to work on. To be able to stay more present in the scene, do less busyness. Because that just comes out of nerves, really, to try to make something happen or give it some action. And it doesn't always require that,” Jack Wagner stated.