The Author
A storyteller's storyteller
Bruce Neckels has spent fifty years in the entertainment business as an actor and a writer — earning four Emmy nominations and the Writers Guild of America Award along the way. Matter of Conscience is the most personal chapter yet.
The Craft
Fifty years in the entertainment business
Bruce Neckels brings the rare perspective of an artist who has lived on both sides of the script. His acting credits across numerous film, television, and stage productions bring another level of creativity to his writing — a feel for character, rhythm, and the moment a scene turns.
His first break as a writer came in 1989, when he was hired by NBC. Since then he has scripted more than 600 episodes for daytime television, including Generations, Santa Barbara, Days of Our Lives, and The Young and the Restless.
Along the way he earned four Emmy® nominations and was honored with the Writers Guild of America Award — recognition from his peers for a body of work that helped define an era of American daytime drama.
The Journey
A life in chapters
Coming of age in California
A young man studies at San Francisco State College amid the music, the politics, and the protests of a generation in upheaval — the years that would shape everything to come.
A matter of conscience
Refusing to fight a war he believed was unjust, Bruce chooses imprisonment over induction. He serves two years in a federal prison as a conscientious objector — an act of defiance born not of religion, but of principle.
A career as an actor
Bruce builds a working life as a performer across film, television, and the stage — credits that sharpen the storyteller's eye he would later bring to the page.
The pen meets the network
NBC hires Bruce as a writer. It's the beginning of a prolific run through the golden age of daytime drama.
600 episodes & four Emmy nods
Across Generations, Santa Barbara, Days of Our Lives, and The Young and the Restless, Bruce becomes one of daytime television's most prolific voices — earning four Emmy nominations and the Writers Guild of America Award.
Matter of Conscience
Bruce turns fifty years of craft toward his own life, publishing the memoir he was always meant to write.
In His Own Time
The boy, the young man, the years that made him
Before the credits and the awards, there was a kid from another America — growing up into the most turbulent decade of the century.
I refused, not for any religious reason, but simply because I would not kill people I had no quarrel with, for a cause I could not support.
Read the story he spent a lifetime ready to tell.
Matter of Conscience brings together the actor, the writer, and the young man who said no.