| Eric Forrester | |||||||||||||||
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| John McCook as Eric Forrester (2011) | |||||||||||||||
| The Bold and the Beautiful | |||||||||||||||
| Portrayed by | John McCook (1987-present) |
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| First appearance | Episode 1 March 23, 1987 |
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| Created by | William J. Bell | ||||||||||||||
| Profile | |||||||||||||||
| Gender | Male | ||||||||||||||
| Occupation | Current
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| Residence | Forrester Mansion 369 Willow Hill Road Beverly Hills, California 90210 |
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Eric Forrester is a fictional character on the CBS Daytime soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful. He has been portrayed by John McCook since the show's debut in 1987.[1] In 1993, 1995, 1996, 2005 and 2008 the character appeared briefly on The Young and the Restless, where McCook had played Lance Prentiss from 1975 to 1980.[1]
McCook was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for the role in 2001.[1][2]
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Eric and his wife, Stephanie, are co-founders of the Los Angeles-based fashion house, Forrester Creations, with Eric as its lead designer. They have five children: Ridge, Thorne, Kristen, Felicia and Angela. Two different retcons have taken away two of his children. The microcephalic Angela viewers meet (and Eric himself meets) in 1988 proves to be an imposter who replaced the real Angela when she died in an accident years before. A 2001 storyline reveals that the real father of his supposed firstborn, Ridge, is the shipping magnate, Massimo Marone.
The backstory involving Stephanie and her college-days rival, Beth Logan, has changed somewhat over the years. Eric and Beth were in love, but a drunken one-night stand with Stephanie gets her pregnant, and eventually she wins Eric from Beth. The 2001 retcon added Massimo, an old boyfriend, to the mix. She had gone to bed with him earlier, but even she assumed that Eric was the father until a blood test proved that was impossible.
The backstory of Forrester Creations makes Eric the one with the talent and Stephanie the one with the business sense. It is Stephanie's father, John Douglas, who, despite disapproving of their marriage, loans Eric $50,000 to start their business, which proves a great success, both in prestige and profits. But those profits are eaten away by a far less prestigious rival, Spectra Fashions, which makes knock-off fashions all too similar to Forrester designs. Spectra was part of the backstory from the beginning, but it wasn't until early 1989 that viewers finally met the outrageous and flamboyant Sally Spectra, who founded and runs the company.
When viewers first meet Eric's wife, Stephanie, (in the second episode) their marriage is already in trouble. Eric declares the marriage "stale," while Stephanie blames their woes on his assistant, Margo Lynley, with whom she incorrectly suspects he is having an affair. Later, Stephanie inadvertently brings an actual "other woman" into his life when she makes the wrong choice of caterers for her party. One of the employees is his old college flame, Beth Henderson, now Beth Logan. After they meet, the two of them resume their love affair from thirty years before. Another employee is Beth's daughter, Brooke, who later proves an even more serious rival for Eric's affections.
Eric eventually leaves his wife for Beth, but what brings him back to the Forrester home (if not Stephanie's bed) is the revelation that he has a 24-year-old daughter he never knew: the microcephalic Angela. Stephanie had pretended she had had a miscarriage to spare Eric the pain of knowing his daughter was so severely disabled. Stephanie had hired a doctor to give Angela 'round-the-clock care in a secret house, never guessing that Angela would live until adulthood. But what the retcon giveth, the retcon can taketh away. It turns out the doctor, Todd Powell, had accidentally killed the real Angela years before. The daughter Eric meets is a perfectly functional imposter.
Other urgent matters—including the secret, withheld even from the partly amnesiac Thorne himself, that Thorne shot Ridge in the back of the head—keep Eric home for awhile. And Stephanie's machinations, which bring Beth's estranged husband back in town, keep him out of that bed. But then his son, Ridge, chooses the publishing heiress, Caroline Spencer, over his fiancée, Brooke. That allows Brooke and him to pick up where he and her mother left off.
Eric offered comfort to a distraught and emotionally disturbed Brooke who watched Ridge her fiancee at the time leave her for Caroline while she was pregnant. Due to Eric sleeping with a drugged Brooke she becomes pregnant with Eric's child and after discovering she was pregnant by the incident she decides to have an affair with Eric. Deciding to abort the baby, she leaves town. They keep their affair quiet for quite some time because Brooke was fearful of what Stephanie (who had abused her and called her the Slut from the Valley) might do. Stephanie ends up finding out because Eric issues the papers to her and tells her he was marrying Brooke because she was pregnant. This stunned Stephanie who had no idea her husband and Brooke were even involved since she had worked along with Caroline to make sure Ridge would marry Caroline. Unfortunately, her plan backfired and Eric the man she was separated from at the time married Brooke, her son's ex-fiancee. Eric marries Brooke due to the pregnancy and his attempt to correct his son's harsh treatment of her. Brooke is regarded as a character that sickens viewers not necessarily due to her affairs but primarily due to the uncanny ability she has of supposedly getting herself in trouble usually through men either seducing her, drugging her or rare moments such as her sleeping with her daughter's boyfriend who dressed like her husband Ridge at the time. These controversial situations have led others to view her as purposely causing the situations since she rarely discourages the men advances once they've taken advantage of her. However, Eric and Brooke were not having an affair until Eric approached Brooke when she was already asleep, drugged and depressed over Ridge leaving her for Caroline. Nor did she dump Ridge to go off and marry Eric. Eric and Brooke's marriage was more one of convenience and his need to compete with his son, Stephanie's most favored child Ridge Forrester as oppose to Eric falling helplessly in love with her. The second incident that involved Eric sleeping with a drugged and inebriated Brooke again was when Brooke and Eric separated due to her and Ridge becoming engaged, which was the time Taylor started to flirt with Ridge. Brooke was pregnant and was sure the child belonged to Ridge. However, after Stephanie talked to Eric, he confirmed to Brooke that he slept with her again while she was drugged and passed out even though they hadn't had sex in months due to their sepaparation since she and Ridge were waiting for Eric to issue the divorce papers. They were also living sepaparte lives. Brooke was shocked and horrified after realizing the baby Bridget, she thought was Ridge's could actually be Eric's as well due to him sleeping with her while she was drugged and drowsey. An incident she didn't remember. This scene is also on Youtube.com in which Brooke confronts Stephanie and then Eric regarding the situation.
In 2001, the shipping magnate, Massimo Marone, comes to town and woos Ridge's mother, Stephanie. Ridge opposes his efforts, and during a heated argument with him, cuts his hand deeply. This leads to a hospital visit and a doctor's discovery, divulged to Stephanie, that the blood types of Eric and Ridge make it impossible for them to be father and son. Stephanie reveals to Massimo that he therefore must be Ridge's father, conceived during a trip to Lake Geneva in their college days. The truth eventually comes out to both Eric and Ridge, and at first it puts an extra burden on the already strained relationship between father and son. Yet despite the efforts of Eric's real sons, Thorne and Rick—who exploit Ridge's lack of a biological tie to Eric—he continues to favor Ridge over the rest of his children.
In 2005, not long after divorcing Stephanie again, Eric returns to Brooke and they marry. The two become co-CEOs of Forrester Creations and fire Stephanie. But then Stephanie discovers a trust which her father had set up for her 40 years before, and which Eric had kept hidden, making her sole owner of the company. She takes over, fires them as CEOs but rehire them as designers, consigned to a basement office. The marriage doesn't last anyway: Brooke ends up back with Ridge, and Eric winds up back with Stephanie.
Eric's marriage to Stephanie is strained when he learns that her machinations led to an outcome she hadn't plotted: the rape of Brooke. This leads, by a circuitous route, to Eric and Brooke's sister, Donna, becoming secret lovers. Various plots by various parties pull Eric from wife to mistress and back again. Nick, who now owns Forrester, makes divorcing Stephanie a condition of selling the company back to Eric. During a Forrester fashion show, Stephanie convinces Thorne and Felicia to lock Donna in a steam room while she wears the showstopper gown, hoping to ruin the show and make Donna look responsible. Stephanie prepares a more devious plot after she is shot and discovers who shot her: Donna's brother, Storm. She conceals her knowledge from the police on the condition that Donna leave Eric. Stephanie's schemes, and the schemes made on her behalf, ultimately fail. She and Eric sign divorce papers on the May 2, 2008 episode; Eric and Donna marry on the May 9th episode.
In July 2008, Eric has a heart attack while having sex with Donna and falls into a coma. Donna has his power of attorney, thus making her acting CEO of Forrester Creations. As CEO, Donna gives promotions to Rick, Marcus Walton (her newly rediscovered son) and the mysterious Owen Knight; and she fires Ridge, Thorne and Felicia. Soon it is revealed that Eric was deliberately poisoned with potassium chloride, which was probably in the gin he drank just before his attack. Everyone is a suspect, including Owen Knight, who—out of unrequited love for Donna—confesses to the crime to take suspicion off her. But it turns out that Stephanie's sister, Pamela, poisoned Eric by giving him a potassium chloride-laced lemon bar. Her intention was only to weaken him and discredit Donna (thus avenging Stephanie) in the process.
Eric eventually recovers, but the schemes to break up his marriage continue apace. Donna gives her enemies ammunition by allowing Owen to kiss her. Just then, Eric—whom she thought was lost forever—is wheeled into the room and sees them. He eventually forgives her, but Thorne hires Donna and Owen lookalikes to make out in front of a secret camera (which a suspicious Eric himself had installed) in Owen's office. The truth eventually comes out, and Eric and Donna remain together.
At one point, Ridge thought Eric was lost forever, too. He even heard Eric's voice, begging his son to let him go. Ridge listens to this grief-induced hallucination and pulls the plug on Eric's breathing machine. After his recovery, Eric learns of this seeming treachery, which allows his younger son, Rick (who, unlike Ridge, is biologically tied to Eric), to exploit this rift. Eventually, Eric fires Ridge and appoints Rick as president of the company. Later, Eric has a change of heart and steps down as CEO so that he can give the job to Ridge. The animosity between Rick and Ridge reaches new heights when Rick accidentally crashes his car and kills his sole passenger: Ridge's daughter (by his ex-wife, Taylor), Phoebe. Rick manages to use even this situation as a means of exploiting Eric's pity. But he still is unable to get his way, which leads to him secretly stealing Forrester designs and giving them to Forrester's rival: Jackie M. Designs. Eric eventually forgives his son and resists efforts from Stephanie and others in the family to prosecute him for his crime.
Sales at Forrester are bad. The public hates the marriage between Eric and Donna. The company looks worse when Eric fires Stephanie, who ends up working at Jackie M., and still worse as Thorne and Felicia quit and Brooke takes a leave of absence. And then Pam sabotages the latest showcase by showering Donna—wearing the showstopper gown—with honey, both a reference to Brian De Palma's 1976 film, Carrie (in which the title character is showered with blood) and to Eric and Donna's well-known habit of using honey during sex play. All this—along Eric's use of illegal immigrants as employees—gives the publishing tycoon, Bill Spencer (the retcon-created son of the older Bill Spencer, a character who mainly appeared from 1987 to 1994), the chance to take over the company. Bill's various efforts fail, until the Forresters are 30 minutes late on their bank loan. Bill pressures the banker to foreclose and sell him the company. The Forresters are furious, but Eric vows to win the company back. Yet it is Ridge's daughter, Steffy, who is able to blackmail Bill into selling the company back to the clan. Eric, Stephanie, Ridge and Taylor (Steffy's mother) end up as equal co-owners of the company.
Eric objects when Donna hosts a talk show called The Catwalk, which is owned by Spencer Publications. Especially objectionable is how close this brings her to the Spencer employee, Justin Barber, Donna's ex-boyfriend and the father of her son, Marcus. Their marriage is further strained after Stephanie inadvertently causes Donna's mother, Beth, to drown in the Forrester swimming pool. Donna wants to press charges, and Eric refuses to let her. Donna realizes how strong the ties are between Eric and his ex-wife; and this realization leads to their divorce. When Stephanie proves to have stage-four cancer, Eric's love for her bubbles to the surface, and the two reunite.
Ridge's son, Thomas (by Taylor), wants to make his mark on the fashion industry with a new line called Taboo, which he promotes via scandal: he surprises Brooke on the runway with a kiss. His purpose is to exploit the public's fascination with his stepmother's pseudo-incestuous romances (with Ridge, Nick, Thorne and Eric), but Taylor worries that Thomas is genuinely attracted to Brooke. Eric supports the line, which leads to a clash with Ridge, who vehemently objects to it. At one point, Eric confesses to Ridge that he feels Taboo is payback: Thomas is doing to his father what Ridge did to his. Eric however, discounts the fact that Brooke was first Ridge's sweetheart, fiancee and almost the mother of his children after she had three miscarriages and fails to see that he shouldn't have dated one of his son's ex-fiancees, let alone marry her.
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