Twice-Told Tales
For many soap actors, their storylines are a direct imitation of life – theirs.

Rena Sofer’s pregnancy was written into the GENERAL HOSPITAL script when she played Lois. Only in her case, art was imitating life, which had already imitated art when she and Wally Kurth (Ned) fell in love. (Got that?) “Life really imitated art with Ned and Lois,” Sofer agrees. “That happened at the same time as Wally and me. It wasn’t on purpose. It just happened.” Her real-life pregnancy was different, though. “I had told Wendy [Riche, executive producer] that Wally and I wanted to have a child before I left GENERAL HOSPITAL and she said, ‘Please don’t do it now. Can you wait until next year?’ But I knew I wanted to be pregnant the last part of my last year on GH. Whether they would write it in or not was up to them, and of course, they wrote it in.” Lois gave birth to Brook Lynn, while Sofer had little Rosabel.

“Art also imitated life for me with Ellen Travolta,” continues Sofer, referring to the actress hired to play Lois’s mother, Gloria. “In playing my mother, she became like a mother to me. She’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known. And Vanessa Marcil [ex-Brenda; now Gina, 90210] became probably my closest friend from that show, and Lois and Brenda were best friends.

“And you know what? I see Vanessa now probably as much as Lois sees Brenda,” Sofer cracks. (Brenda is dead.) “So that’s life imitating art as well!”

NOTHING IN COMMON

Sometimes art has absolutely nothing to do with life.

“I had no idea that Eve was a singer,” offers Rena Sofer, who now plays Eve on MELROSE PLACE. “They offered me the role and after I had accepted and we started contract negotiations, all of a sudden, I found out that I was playing a singer. Which was shocking, to say the least.”

The problem, of course, is that Sofer can’t sing. “I had to lip-synch. They gave me this job without even questioning whether I was going to be able to do it or not. It’s been the scariest part of my career, I have to say; getting up and having to sing. I feel like a phony.”

Carolyn Hinsey
Soap Opera Digest
March 30