Try not to be too sad when Rena Sofer makes her final appearance on The Bold and the Beautiful on Monday, August 29. She herself is very much at peace with her departure. In fact, “I had already decided this was going to be my last contract, but when they finished the story of Quinn and Carter coming together, it seemed like the right time,” she tells Soap Opera Digest.

Sofer could potentially have just gone off contract with the show, but that wasn’t of interest. “It’s hard enough to be on a soap opera when you don’t have a story,” she says, “but to come back in a recurring role to a show that you were fully invested in as a daily player would not be a comfortable place for me. That is not a step in the direction I want to go.

“I want to move forward with my life,” she adds, “into the scary unknown.”

In Sofer’s immediate future, that includes getting daughter Avalon, 17, ready for college, working on her pottery career and returning to the audition circuit. You’ll recall that, although the veteran of Another World, Loving and General Hospital has long been a daytime MVP, her resumé boasts approximately a zillion primetime credits, ranging from Seinfeld to Friends, from Melrose Place to Just Shoot Me!