General Hospital actor Jens Austin Astrup opened up about his rocky childhood in a candid interview with his co-star, Maurice Benard, revealing the complex family dynamics that shaped who he is today. Jens joined the soap opera cast in November 2024 as Kai Taylor, the love interest of Tabyana Ali’s character Trina Robinson. His journey to the screen was far from easy, after his father tragically died by suicide when Jens was just 15 years old.
A rocky road
Maurice, who plays Sonny Corinthos on General Hospital, sat down with Jens for an emotional interview on his show State of Mind, as the young actor got candid about his father’s death. “He was depressed for sure,” Jens explained. “I think it was a culmination of a lot of things. I think he had a lot of regret. I think he felt a lot of guilt. Life was getting too hard. I think even money was too hard for him. We really struggled growing up. We struggled pretty severely.”
“They couldn’t hide it necessarily, but they never wanted us to feel that, right?” he continued. “But it’s interesting because then it gave us kind of a false sense that when I go to a store, I could get Converse, right? I could ask my dad for, right?”
The 25-year-old then shared an anecdote to illustrate his family’s dire circumstances. “I remember asking him for these Converse once at the Fox Hills Culver City Mall, and he was like, ‘No, I can’t.’ And I was so upset; I really wanted these shoes, and he’s like, ‘I’m so sorry.’ The following week, though, to surprise me, he got me the shoes, and I was so psyched.”
“And I went biking that day with a friend, and it’s like a fixed-gear bike, so it has like one gear, and the gears don’t stop spinning on a fixed-gear,” he said. Jens’ shoelace got caught in the gear, effectively unravelling the expensive Converse, which caused a huge argument with his father. “He was so stressed with money at that time, that that’s what was…That’s why he was so [upset],” Jens said. His father sadly passed away just two weeks later.
Family ties
Jens’ parents were divorced when his father died, and his mother was struggling to make ends meet, often sleeping on the streets. He and his sister went to live with family members whom they barely knew, until they came of age. “When he died, my great-uncle and great-aunt, who I’d met like once before, they took us in, and I was technically a ward of the court until I was eighteen,” the Gossip Girl alum recounted. “So they were my foster care guardians. So that day, the day my dad passed away, my life changed.”
© Getty ImagesJens also shared a fraught relationship with his sister for years, due to her mental health and substance abuse issues. She is currently incarcerated, yet the pair moved past their estrangement and reconnected six months prior to the interview, after he visited her in prison.
© Disney via Getty Images“She had a lot of mental illness, a lot of mental issues as well, and she coped a lot with drug use, beginning at that place after my dad passed away,” he shared, adding that she had changed for the better since her time in prison. “My sister is like my sister again. We missed each other.”
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