Scott Clifton is an easy interview. The rookie GENERAL HOSPITAL star who plays Dillon answers the most obligatory question ("How are you like your character?") without even having to be asked. For example, it becomes clear that he doesn't share his small screen persona's encyclopedic knowledge of the big screen when Clifton can't remember the name of movie he had just seen with his buddies over the weekend. "Oh, boy, I'm horrible at this!" Clifton exclaims apologetically. "It just came out -- a comedy. I do this all the time: I go to the movies, then I completely blank out and can't remember a thing about the film."

Clifton can be forgiven because of the hour of the day -- the phone woke him up mid-morning for this interview on one of the few days off he's had since his debut as Tracy Quartermaine's off-beat, porcupine-haired son with cinematic aspirations. Speaking from his cozy bachelor pad ("I live by myself in a junky little one-bedroom apartment in Studio City that I fixed up pretty nicely -- not bad for a 19-year-old") Clifton reveals he used his GH paycheck to buy his freedom. "After a couple of months I said, 'Wait a minute, I'm getting paid steadily here, I've got a contract, and as long as I don't do anything stupid I can keep that contract. So I want to move out!' My parents are the coolest people on the planet and they were really supportive of me moving out. It wasn't like I wanted to get away from my parents. I just wanted to see what it was like to come home to a place that was mine: I open up the refrigerator and there's food in there that I picked. For example, my mom always buys the mayonnaise in the jar and you have to take the spatula and take the knife and it gets all messy. But my house, my rules: I buy squeezable mayonnaise. That's right. You can squeeze that crap right on to the bread and then spread it and you're done. My parents just couldn't get that through their head. And now it's my life!"

It's simple pleasures like these that keep Clifton's spirit buoyed: he spent his last day off playing video games."I'm a nerd -- a complete and total geek." Try telling that to his legions of female followers, some of whom stopped him for his autograph while watching that movie he still can't remember the title of. "Somebody asked me, 'What is it like to have girls all over you now?' I'm like, 'It's spatial management. You keep one in your backpack, you keep one in your back pocket...' I have tried for periods in my life to be a 'ladies' man,' be non-committal and play the field, but I can't do it. I always end up going back to a relationship. I'm much better at that, because I'd always feel unsatisfied, thinking 'I just want to go home.' When you find somebody who is 'home' to you, it is the most fulfilling feeling there is."

While Clifton might prefer to beat home, he gets a little self- conscious at being labeled a romantic. "I hate saying it, it's torture to say it, but I am one. Maybe it's because people that consider themselves 'romantics' bother me. I don't know why -- maybe it's because I am feminine enough as it is. I am such a girly-man," says Clifton, who admits to crying during sappy movies. "If it got any worse...I have to maintain some degree of masculinity!"

For those who are wondering, Clifton does have a home now, although it sounds like he lives somewhere in Port Charles' zip code. "I can personally relate to the Sonny/Carly/Alcazar/Sam stuff a lot. There are some things that have been going on with me lately that I have been dealing with romantically. Oh, God -- I am going to be very vague here -- I have experienced, recently, probably the most pain I have ever been in, in my entire life. It's like, 'Wow...that's how that feels.'

"I did these scenes recently where Dillon is watching Georgie supposedly have sex through the window, and he is crushed and hurt. He sees her with another guy and he is jealous and he doesn't know what to do with these feelings. I did my best with those scenes, but my personal life seemed to be imitating that just after I shot it. So I keep having these feelings that if I could just go back and do those scenes over, I could win the Emmy. I get it now. I get it, I get it, I get it. All I can say is that Sonny and Carly are handling their romantic betrayals and dilemmas better than I am handling mine."