The Resilient Journey of ‘General Hospital’ Star Kirsten Storms, From DUI Arrest and Divorce to Brain Surgery
General Hospital character Maxie Jones is pretty resilient. Her portrayer, Kirsten Storms, is no different. Maxie has been put through the wringer on the soap.
When she was a young girl, she survived a heart transplant. She has an absent father, and her mother wasn’t around much as she grew up. Maxie’s sister and husband were both murdered. She delivered one baby on the side of the road, and another in the woods. Most recently, her fiancé and the father of her youngest daughter turned out to be a psychotic killer.
Storms has also been through some turmoil and is standing strong.
Kirsten Storms before ‘General Hospital’ fame
Storms knew she wanted to be an actor. More than that, she knew she wanted to be in soaps. The Florida native did commercials as a child in her hometown of Orlando. When she was 12, her family moved to LA. Storms got her big break at 14 when she was cast in the starring role in Disney Channel’s Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. The huge hit was the most popular movie on the network for a long time.
Disney followed it up with Zenon: The Zequel and Zenon: Z3, with the future General Hospital star playing the titular role in both. The actor went right from Disney to soaps when she got the role of Belle Black on Days of Our Lives. She left that soap when her contract was up to star in the primetime series Clubhouse. The show was canceled after only five episodes.
Storms returned to soaps with the role of Maxie Jones on General Hospital. She has been a resident of Port Charles since 2005.
Kirsten Storms has faced some tough obstacles
The Zenon actor met her husband on the set of General Hospital. Brandon Barash played Johnny Zacchara on the daytime drama, and the two became friends while working together.
Storms and Barash tried at love after seven years of friendship. They married in 2013 and have a daughter, Harper Rose. Unfortunately, they did not work as a couple and decided to divorce.
“I’ve cried with Brandon in the last few years about feeling like Harper has a broken family, and she doesn’t have a lot of friends who have divorced parents,” Storms told Maurice Benard on his State of Mind podcast. Ultimately, the two have remained close friends and co-parents to their daughter.
On December 7, 2007, the GH star was arrested for DUI. She was originally stopped for throwing a cigarette out her car window on the LA Freeway, which is a littering infraction.
She pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to 36 months probation, $1,643 in fines, completion of a 90-day alcohol program, and was ordered to attend 12 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, according to People.
In 2021, Storms faced maybe her toughest obstacle. She needed brain surgery after doctors found a large cyst attached to the lower part of her brain. It was not cancerous and she shared on Instagram that she felt “very fortunate that my situation wasn’t more serious and that I had a wonderful neurosurgeon who immediately knew how to fix it.”
Other soap stars arrested for DUIs
Storms is not the only soap actor to have a DUI on their record. Veteran soap star Jensen Buchanan pleaded guilty to driving with a blood-alcohol content more than four times above the legal limit in 2016.
She crashed her Mercedes into another car and the driver was critically injured. Soap Central reported that she was sentenced to one year in County Jail and five years probation. Buchanan was arrested two years later for violating her probation. She was found not guilty.
Sean Kanan, who appeared on both General Hospital and The Bold and the Beautiful, was convicted of a DUI in 1998, according to Soap Central.
