Career and Life

​

Kristoff St. John was an actor best known for playing Neil Winters on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless from 1991 until he died in 2019, which earned him two Daytime Emmy Awards from eleven nominations, and ten NAACP Image Awards. He was also known for his role as Adam Marshall in the NBC soap opera Generations, for which he received two Daytime Emmy Award nominations, and as a young Alex Haley on ABC miniseries Roots: The Next Generations.

​

As a ten-year-old child, St. John had a featuring role on the Saturday-morning comedy Big John, Little John, broadcast on NBC in 1976. St. John portrayed a young Alex Haley in the 1979 ABC miniseries Roots: The Next Generations. He also made a small appearance as Booker Brown on the ABC sitcom Happy Days, as well as a boyfriend of Denise Huxtable on an early episode of The Cosby Show. He appeared as Charlie Richmond Jr. in the 1985 CBS sitcom Charlie & Co in his first significant role.

​

St. John's first significant soap role was Adam Marshall on the NBC soap opera, Generations. After the show's cancellation in 1991, he originated the role of Neil Winters on The Young and the Restless and played the character for 28 years; no African American actor had appeared on the series more frequently than St. John. In 1992, he won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series. On September 5, 1994, he hosted CBS Soap Break.

​

In 2005, St. John became a special guest host for TV Guide Channel. In 2007, he received his fifth Daytime Emmy nomination. He was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor. In 2008, St. John won his second Daytime Emmy as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.

​

In 2014, A Man Called God, a documentary that St. John co-directed with his father, Christopher St. John, debuted at the San Diego Black Film Festival. The film was awarded at festivals such as the American Documentary Film Festival and the Beverly Hills Film Festival.

​

Kristoff's final appearance as Neil aired on February 6, 2019. Late in April, it was revealed that Neil had died of a stroke.

​

St. John was married and divorced twice. He had a son Julian (1989–2014), and a daughter Paris Nicole (born 1992), with his first wife, boxer Mia St. John. Julian died by suicide on November 23, 2014, following a long history of mental illness. St. John was married to Allana Nadal from 2001 to 2007, and they had a daughter, Lola (born April 15, 2003). On August 31, 2018, he was engaged to Russian model Kseniya Olegovna Mikhaleva.

​

St. John died at his Los Angeles, California, home on February 3, 2019, at age 52. His death was ruled accidental, with the cause listed as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Source.