They say practice makes perfect. When Mark Consuelos tried out for a permanent role on the ABC soap “All My Children,” his behind-closed-doors rehearsals with future wife Kelly Ripa paid off big.
Consuelos, then a novice actor, had a temporary job playing the role of Mateo Santos on the soap back in 1995 when ABC brass decided they wanted to make his character permanent.
But in the revolving-door world of TV soaps, Consuelos couldn’t automatically keep the part he’d been playing for months: He had to audition, The Post’s Bill Sanderson reports.
It helped that Consuelos was a favorite of the “All My Children” crew, makeup artist Norman Bryn writes in his new book, “Makeup & Misery: Adventures in the Soap Factory.”
“Mark had been fairly low-key, quiet and humble as he learned the ropes and hoped he’d eventually be upgraded to full contract status,” writes Bryn, who recalls Consuelos as “a nice, unpretentious guy.”
“A number of hunky guys were brought in to read with Kelly — a passionate scene to test the romantic potential of each . . . I applied Mark’s makeup, and that of some of the other men, also . . . I didn’t go out of my way to make any of the competition particularly striking . . . I wanted to give him whatever advantage I could.”
It turned out Consuelos had a bigger edge than anyone knew.
“Mark’s real advantage was Kelly . . . She had no trouble calling up genuine lust to steam up the screen and blow the other contestants out of the bed sheets,” said Bryn. “Many of the crew marveled at how ‘realistic’ the scene was, unaware Kelly and Mark had rehearsed outside the studio quite a few times already!”
Consuelos got the job. They eloped in Las Vegas the following year. Both eventually quit the ABC soap as their careers advanced. But in January, Consuelos and Ripa will appear in two episodes of “All My Children” to mark the show’s 40th anniversary.