Robert Kelker-Kelly, best known for starring on “Days of Our Lives,” has died. He was 62 years old.
The soap opera star died Oct. 3 at his home in Missouri, a medical examiner told Page Six on Monday.
Kelker-Kelly had complained of chest pains and was found unresponsive when officers arrived on scene around 8:16 p.m. local time, St. Peters police told TMZ.
Authorities said Kelker-Kelly was no longer breathing and they took steps to save her life, but were unsuccessful. The cause of death has not yet been revealed.
Kelker-Kelly was born on April 18, 1964, in Cleveland, Ohio, to nurse Jonetta Kelker and medical examiner Robert Kelker before moving to Wichita, Kansas, where he lived until age 18.
He launched his amateur acting career in high school when he developed a fascination with poet William Shakespeare, as he shared during a 2013 interview with We Love Soaps.
After graduating, he moved to Florida to study acting and lived there until he met an unidentified Playboy playmate, whom he followed to California. Even though “the relationship didn’t work out,” the decision ultimately allowed her to find an agent.
Kelker-Kelly recalled his difficult beginnings after the move, when he was around 23, and how he was homeless when he made his acting debut in 1987 as Sam Fowler on the soap opera “Another World.” He played the character for three years.
“By the time I was cast in ‘Another World,’ I was homeless, sleeping in my Jeep or on anyone’s floor, and working as a secretary for a headhunter’s office in Los Angeles,” he said. “My God, I forgot about that.”
Then, in 1992, Kelker-Kelly was cast as Bo Brady on “Days of Our Lives,” a role originally played by actor Peter Reckell.
Recalling his time on the show until 1995, he told We Love Soaps that the NBC drama was “even more exhausting” than “Another World.”
“I worked an average of 90 hours a week,” Kelker-Kelly said. “They were shooting one to two shows a day, so we were doing 120 pages of dialogue and it was going on for a long time.”
Kelker-Kelly remembers that “his shirt was off all the time” and he would spend hours at the gym followed by a full day of work.
Kelker-Kelly explained that he initially signed a “three-year” contract with the soap’s executives and “negotiated a second contract” which ultimately “failed.”
However, he admitted that “Days of Our Lives” had “left such a bitter taste in (his) mouth” that he “couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I was tired,” he told the outlet. “At that point, I was starting to get bored with the equipment because the equipment was deteriorating, in my opinion. I had already started to ask myself, ‘How could I get out of the business?’ But I didn’t know what else to do.
After leaving the series, Kelker-Kelly moved to New York before accepting the role of Stavros Cassadine on “General Hospital” in 2001. He made appearances on the soap opera in 2002, 2003, 2013 and 2014.
He gushed about his time on “General Hospital” while chatting with We Love Soaps, saying, “It was the best experience on any soap opera I’ve ever had.”
During his career, he won two Soap Opera Digest Awards, including Outstanding Lead Actor for his role on “Days of Our Lives” in 1994. The following year, Kelker-Kelly and his on-screen love interest Lisa Rinna, who played Billie Reed, won the award for Hottest Soap Couple.
Earlier this year, Kelker-Kelly made headlines when Rinna accused him of being the “biggest bully in Hollywood.”
In Rinna’s memoir, “You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About This,” she claimed that Kelker-Kelly “was horrible to her” while they worked together.
“I would go so far as to say that he was verbally abusive. He was passive-aggressive, manipulative and played strange mind games,” the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” alum claimed in the book.
“I had to work with him every day, often half-naked doing love scenes. If I didn’t do what he wanted, he would give me the silent treatment.”
Rinna called her former castmate “a ticking time bomb”, adding that she never knew whether she would “become the nice Robert Kelker-Kelly or the dark Robert Kelker-Kelly” when she arrived on set each day.
“He was unpredictable and it was exhausting,” she said in her memoir.
Kelker-Kelly has never publicly responded to Rinna’s allegations.
After stepping away from the spotlight, Kelker-Kelly earned her certifications to become a commercial pilot for a company in St. Louis, Missouri.
“I also teach on the side because I love teaching,” he told We Love Soaps in 2013. “I still teach acting from time to time, private coaching, monologues and things like that. I live in the Midwest.”
Kelker-Kelly was married to actress Miriam Parrish from 1997 to 2013. He is survived by his daughter Amelia Rose Kelly.
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