When he's not busy falling off the wagon as GH's very serious A.J., Sean Kanan can often be found cutting loose at comedy clubs as one of the main attractions. To the actor, it's not unusual that someone who lives his day for drama is naturally funny at night. "I think that the reality, a lot of times, is that comedians are people who turn to doing comedy when it comes from inner-turmoil," he suggests. "Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor had a lot of emotion going on inside of them, and it manifested itself as comedy. But there was a lot of pain and pathos that went along with it."

For Kanan, the laughs came early on in life. "When I was a kid, whenever I would get into trouble, I would do strange voices and impersonations to make my mother laugh in order to get out of trouble." At 16, the actor and a friend entered stand-up contests in Pennsylvania (where he grew up) and Ohio, but it wasn't until he started on GH that Kanan's talent for stand-up really began to shine. When he was asked to be a celebrity m.c. for a night at a local comedy club, Kanan agreed. "But if I'm going to do it," he told the organizer, "I don't want to just stand up there and m.c. - I want to do comedy."

He worked with a writer and came up with some of his own material to get his act together. Not surprisingly, much of his shtick comes from being a soap star. "I find being on a soap sort of writes a lot of comedy itself," he realizes. "My character A.J. was 11 years old and he was shipped off to boarding school. He came back a few years later as a 24-year-old alcoholic. And I talk about the Quartermaines a lot." Of course, he's still doing impersonations - everyone from John Travolta to Christopher Walken to Sean Connery.

Does the actor, who also aspires to be a feature film writer, have designs on turning his penchant for stand-up into a sitcom, a la Jerry Seinfeld? "No. None whatsoever," he says matter-of-factly." "I would consider doing a sitcom if it was a filmed sitcom along the lines of FRIENDS." For now, he's pleased performing the occasional stand-up gigs in L.A., Las Vegas and New York, as long as it doesn't get in the way of his acting. "I worry about crossing certain lines: Is he a comedian? Is he an actor? At least for now, I haven't let the comedy get any bigger than it is, where I could have if I really wanted to, because my first love is doing drama."