Rex Balsom

Walter "Rex" Balsom, Jr. is a fictional character on the American daytime drama One Life to Live, portrayed by John-Paul Lavoisier from May 9, 2002 to January 12, 2012.

Casting and characterization

With the character initially named "Jamie" prior to production, then-Executive Producer Gary Tomlin "toyed with the idea" of putting Rex in a gay storyline; Lavoisier stated in Soap Opera Digest in 2003 that he had been "asked by the higher powers at the show how I would feel about doing something like that. I said, 'Absolutely, any plot you want to give me, I'll take on strong.' And they said, 'Okay, we just wanted to check.'" However, this idea was never realized and the character has been repeatedly paired with women. Calling Rex a "heterosexual horndog," Lavoisier noted that he "added a glint in [Rex's] eye he'd lifted from Ryan Phillippe's ... Cruel Intentions character of Sebastian. 'They said, "Sure, go with that. Start with that." And that was pretty much it.'"

In 2007, the series began a revisiting of Rex's backstory before his arrival in 2002. The introduction of the character's high school girlfriend Gigi Morasco and her son Shane — and the fact that Gigi has something she has waited years to tell him — initially indicates that Shane may be Rex's son; this is confirmed onscreen on 17 March 2008. Tomlin's return to the series as Head Writer during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike also featured Rex beginning an investigation into his own family history, prompted by his pending wedding to Adriana Cramer and the "suspicious" behavior of his mother Roxy. Rex was born in 1979, as a result of an affair between Clint Buchanan and Echo DiSavoy.