ARTICLES
- Surprise! She's a Good Girl at Heart!
- Why Marcy Walker Kept Her Wedding A
  Secret
- Marcy Walker's Ecstatic: "I'm having a
  Baby!"
- The Love Story of Santa Barbara's Cruz
  and Eden
- Marcy Walker Mother-To-Be
- How Soap Stars Raise Their Kids
- Marcy Walker: On marriage, motherhood,
  and those sizzling love scenes
- Marcy's Paris Diary
- SB Eden '91 Going Away Party
- Marcy Talking About A Martinez
- Cruz and Eden's Family Ties
- Can Santa Barbara Survive Without
  Eden?
- Out of the Garden of Eden
- GL's Marcy Walker "Love is the Answer"
- Introducing GL’s Marcy Walker
- Kiss and Tell
- Back to the Future
- Liza Woos Tad
- Dixie and Tad's Breakup
- Psychotic role shows WALKER's
  villainous side
- Torn Between Two Loves
- The Juggler
- Liza's Manhunt
- Mother Knows Best
- The Play's the Thing
- AMC Stars Put on the Dog
- More Marcy!
- AMC News Blurb
- Love Letters
- Liza's History
- Have Suitcase, Will Travel
- Marcy Walker: "I'm Really Blessed…"
- Meet Liza Colby Chandler
- Marcy Walker chooses faith over soaps
- The New York Times
- She's found her 'Guiding Light'
- From Soaps to Serving God

INTERVIEWS
- Marcy’s most Memoral Christmas
- Marcy Walker: "I love 'playing' a baddie ...
  but wish people wouldn't hate me! I'm not
  like Liza at all!"
- The Best Days of her Life ... are now!
- "Healthstyles of the fit and famous"
- Marcy on Eden and Cruz, Eden’s Rape
  and Unforgettable Scene
- Getting Intimate with Santa Barbara's A
  Martinez and Marcy Walker
- Interview from Soap Opera Update
- Marcy Walker on Liza Colby
- The Beginning of an Actress
- Walker, Pine Valley Ranger
- AOL 1995 Chat
- AOL 1998 Chat
- Cameron Clicks
- My Mother, Myself
- Marcy Walker Interview with TV Guide
- Liza with a Zing
- Marcy Walker's Serpentine Journey
  Through Life Has Brought Her...Peace &
  Joy
- Beat The Clock
- Walker on the Wild Side
- Character Profile – Liza Colby

SNIPPLETS
- Look Who's In Love...
- Clean up your act!
- Video Vixen
- Moving Madness
- Liza Drops a Bomb
- Sounding Board
- Soap Violence
- What was the Best Present you ever
  gave at christmas?
- Guiding Light
- Runner-Up: Marcy Walker as Liza Colby
- Surprise Twist
- Leaders among Leading Men
- Gown & Out in Santa Barbara
- Between Love And Hate
- FYI
- My 2 Loves
- Rating The Soap Star Hairstyles
- Bye Bye Barbara
- Performer of the Week
- "ROUND UP What is your best or worst
  memory of going back to school?
- Hot Shot
- Will You Marry Me?
- Let's Do Brunch
- SOW names Marcy performer of the
  week for w/o Dec. 2
- Hit ... The ugly truth on AMC
- Performer of the Week
- Applause, Applause - Marcy Walker
  (Liza, All My Children)
- AMC Beauty falls for Younger Guy!
- A Mother's Nature
- Real Life Duos and where they are now
- Beauty Bar - Stars Reveal Their Biggest
  Beauty Blunders
- Hit...Liza's confession on AMC
- Star Talk
- Grand Tribute
- Kicking The Habit
- High and Lau
- Round Up: Which celebrity is most like a
  soap character, and why?
- Beauty Secrets: Personally Speaking
- Soap Talk: Question: Do you have a
  favorite household invention?
- A Big Break
- A Mother’s Love
- Love's First Blush Tad & Liza: All Fired
  Up!
- Hello, Again
- Behind The Scenes at the SOD Awards
- ABC News Blurb
- Picky, Picky
- Best storyline on All My Children-Liza and
  Adam's Romance
- Fowl Play

Liza with a Zing

Marcy Walker reflects upon the luck of the draw, the love of her life, and keeping in touch with her inner bad girl

There are moments in everyone's life that define who they are. But Marcy Walker can't whittle down her existence to mere moments. Rather, she meticulously divides her years into three eras and doesn't apologize for what an analysis of them inevitably would mean - that in spite of marriage, divorce, motherhood, an enviable career spanning nearly 20 years, and even a Best Actress Daytime Emmy victory, she is still very much a work in progress.

"When I first came to All My Children, I was extremely naive," recalls the Kentucky native, who made her debut as Marian Colby's vicious teenage daughter, Liza, in 1982. "It was my first time being away from my family. I was learning about life and who I was and about being an actor, all at the same time."

"And I can't say that is was without its stumbles," she adds, "because I definitely had those. But I was really, really lucky to have this show be my first experience in terms of daytime."

EXIT TO EDEN

For two years, the raw recruit honed her skills at AMC alongside some of the most prestigious performers in serials - Ruth Warrick (Phoebe), Susan Lucci (Erica) and Dorothy Lyman (ex-Opal), among them - while her comtemptuous pixie-haired alter ego did her best to bust up supercouple Jenny Gardner and Greg Nelson and to settle down her conniving equal, Tad "The Cad" Martin. "I was probably, out of the whole circle of the young performers, the most clueless," Walker admits, "about what was expected of me and what my responsibilities were. I was lucky that I paid attention and that I respected these people who did it so well and so effortlessly."

But those good old days were just the beginning. Little did Walker realize when she left New York and joined a quirky new NBC soap called Santa Barbara that her star would go from rising slowly and steadily to shooting skyward at mach speed. Nor could she have predicted that her protrayal of SB's beleaguered heiress Eden Capwell would win her an Emmy in 1989...or that in short order, her personal life would go through many changes, including a divorce and the birth of her son, Taylor, now 10. "I felt like I got on track around the time I had him. I had spent that second part of my life, from 20 to 30, finishing the first."

Be Careful What You Wish For

In 1991, Walker decided to branch out and opted to leave daytime for the lead in Palace Guard, a new series from Stephen J. Cannell, the creator of the A-Team. Much to her chagrin, she discovered that the grass wasn't greener on the other side. "I didn't know that I didn't want that [primetime] until I was in the middle of it," she reflects. "It wasn't that it turned me off, but it just didn't turn me on." Fortunately for the actress, the audience felt the same way about the series as she was feeling about her post-soap career. The show was canceled after only four weeks.

Two years later following a string of TV movies, including Terror of the Shadows, with Genie Francis (Laura, General Hospital), Walker received an offer she couldn't refuse. Former SB executive producter Jill Farren Phelps invited her to return to Manhattan and join the cast of Guiding Light, the serial that Phelps was helming at the time. But though Walker's arrival as the mysterious Tangie Hill was hyped to high heaven, the experience was less then stellar. "The character wasn't working," she explains. "I wasn't working. I felt that I was lost - that I was missing the great dance."

So when the drama where she originally had earned her stripes asked her to return, she leapt at the opportunity.

Grace Under Pressure

In 1995, a more fully evolved Liza and her portrayer resurfaced in Pine Valley. "This third part of my life has been about learning who I am and my personal worth", shared Walker. "You have to be a gracious and encouraging person in life - I think that's almost a necessity these days - but at the same time, it's completely all right to expect others to treat you well and to appreciate and to be loving to you. Some people learn it very early on what their personal worth is; with others, it just takes longer."

Although emotionally, she may be a late bloomer these days, Walker is having no identity crisis. "I am Taylor's mom," she states emphatically, "and I'm a pretty darn good mother. I have a good relationship with my son. Careerwise, I feel I'm good at what I do. I know I try really hard at it. I still will not go a day without giving it everything I've got."

Walker's co-stars agree. In March, after this year's Daytime Emmy nominations were announced, many of her castmates lamented the fact that her name was conspicuously absent from the ballot. "Marcy is so good that nobody know she's good," suggests Jennifer Bassey, who plays her mom, Marian. "They don't know how wonderful she is. But when you work with her, that's when you really are impacted. I think she's the best actress on daytime television."

Adds Kelly Ripa (Hayley): "Marcy is brilliant. She just walks in; she doesn't have to say anything, and she should win an Emmy."

However, Walker herself was not offended by what many critics considered a snub. Instead she is diplomatic and refreshingly forthright about the voting process. "Across the breadth of this whole industry, we have a lot of really great people," she says, "and a lot of people who really deserve to be recognized aren't. I was not discouraged that I wasn't nominated. It's always an incredible honor [to make the cut], but it wasn't meant to be."

This Year's Model

Instead of dwelling on what wasn't or what could have been, Walker is reveling in what is. And that is Liza. Like her portrayer, the former adolescent Jezebel has experienced an evolution. From troublemaker to executive to mommy. "Every day it's a new challenge," says the actress. "Right now, I'm playing the new person that she's become through really accepting that she's loved and having the love of her child and having all the things that she thought she'd never have that she always wished for."

"This way," she adds," the audience, the writers and everybody else are allowed to bring her back to her original horribleness if they ever wanted to do that."

So, it is safe to assume that naughty Liza has not disappeared for good? "Bad girl's just sleeping," Walker replies with a laugh. "She can come back anytime, and I hope they do bring her back. I really do. I just loved the way they wrote for her [as a vixen]. It was so great. I'd walk away flushed from the day because it was really an achievement to get to that place, and it was really fun."

Walker may very well get her wish. Who knows how Liza will react when the truth is revealed that Adam is really Colby's biological father. "I think she's going to be pretty mad when she finds out the truth," offers her portrayer. "But who knows? It's all hypothesis for me. I said to David [Canary, Adam/Stuart], 'What would be the great thing to do is for her to reject her daughter'...for her to become so emotionally distraught over what he did that she completely rejects her child. Then eventually she could come back to falling in love with him and Colby. It could be kind of interesting."

A Simple Life

While her character's home life could fall apart at any minute, reality for Walker is much more stable. Currently single, the actress and her son recently moved from Manhattan back to Connecticut, where they had been residing previously. "I really missed having a home," she shares. "And he wasn't getting nearly enough exercise. I was selfishly hoping that I would be able to make my commute better and have more time for my son by living in the city, but that didn't seem the case. So, I just said, 'Forget it. I'm not going to be proud. I'm just going to pack up my junk and go."

Now the two are enjoying life in the country, where they attend church, Taylor participates in Little League, and Walker putters around the yard and makes Dunkin'Donut coffee runs. Would she ever consider saying "See ya" to showbiz in exchange for a more "normal" existence? "I could," she reveals, "But I'd like to work like a dog for the next 10 years or more - as long as they'll have me. And if I couldn't do what I do now, I'd still want to be a part of [soaps], but in a different function. I would hope that they would sew me back together and shove me somewhere. Anything but Xeroxing - I'm never good at that." SID 8/10/99

Marcy Walker's Serpentine Journey Through Life Has Brought Her...Peace & Joy

Joy is a word used frequently by Marcy Walker these days. Moreover, it's a state of being she strives to inhabit constantly and consistently. The flaxen-haired, husky-voiced daytime favorite who originated the role of All My Children's Liza Colby in the early 1980s and returned in 1995, eagerly discusses why she feels at peace, both personally and professionally. First and foremost is her relationship with God. "Without that, I'm nothing," she insists. "The source of my strength and peace and joy is God. What gives me joy? There's so much. Every day there's always something. And you have to seek it out. Joy comes in silence and stillness and peace. It comes to us in relieving ourselves of burdens. It comes in the act of someone else reaching out to us and saying, 'Let me take care of that for you.' There's great joy in forgiveness, and great joy in serving. Knowing that you've done something that day to brighten someone's day can give you great joy."

Another avenue of delight in Walker's life is her marriage this past December to ex-Marine Doug Smith, whom she met last year at a Bible study class at the church they attend near her Connecticut home. What prompted her to walk down the aisle for the fourth time? "In the past I was always the one in the center, the pivotal one in the relationship. I was very strong-willed. I realized ultimately that none of that meant anything. I had to put aside my will and ask God to be at the center of everything in my life. I have so much more peace now, and I've grown enormously. The life I have now is not the same one I had. I don't know quite how to explain that except that it's by the grace of God. Each day I'm so appreciative. It's been an emotional transformation."

"Doug was a Type-A personality," she adds. "Both of us have experience with lots of the same kind of issues. We have the strength to do whatever we want, individually and combined. But we have made a commitment that God is at the center of our lives, and that has made all the difference in the world."

Don't get the wrong impression, Walker has not turned into Mother Marcy Teresa, or some proselytizing religious radical who's convinced that hers is the only road to take. Actually, her sharp wit and hearty laugh - often at her own expense - are on display frequently, and you get the feeling she doesn't suffer fools gladly.

Thanks in part to her Christian faith, Walker has learned to roll with the punches. "I really believe it all starts individually," she says. "You start with your own heart, and then you reach out to the people around you with graciousness and kindness. You then can go out from there to your community, to your state, and to the country and the world. To make a difference is an inside job. You have to be willing to be judged the way you're willing to judge everyone else. It's actually very easy, day by day, to make the right choices. It's more difficult to make the wrong choices and have to live with the backlash."

"Maybe once I became a mom I became more aware of how I feel about things, because as a parent you have to be aware of where you stand," Walker surmises. Her son, Taylor, or Tay, turns 11 this year, and it's obvious how crazy this mother is about her boy. "A very valuable lesson I learned early on with my son is that I am wrong a lot, and that there's great value in apologizing. I have that kind of accountability to my son, and I've earned his respect because of it."

She also marvels at the changes and growth Taylor has undergone since Doug came into their lives. "Doug is incredible with my son. Because of the unconditional love showered on him, Taylor's self-esteem has been rising incredibly. Doug and I both knew that if Taylor wasn't in love with Doug, it wasn't going to work. It was Taylor who chose for it to happen. They are amazing together. Doug just took him on a Boy Scouts white-water rafting trip. I see that Taylor now has a balance in his life. It had to come from us and through us. I look at him and think he's going to be a good man someday. I stand back in amazement every day at the path he is on."

Walker's own path in life has been illuminated for a long time by the glare of daytime stardom. By the time she was 18 she was already gaining notoriety and fans as AMC's Liza, a child of privilege. "I was raised so differently," Walker points out. "Our family (including two younger brothers) camped out together. Liza would never think of camping; there's bugs." Thanks to her father's engineering career, the family lived an itinerant lifestyle, including a stint in Iran, which saw them escaping that country just before the collapse of the shah's reign more than 20 years ago. Moving so often, she says, helped develop her adaptability. "New experiences didn't scare me; strangers or odd circumstances didn't shake me. But I don't think it contributed to my being a better actor. Until I was on All My Children I didn't know what it meant to be an actor. I learned from watching David Canary, Susan Lucci and Julia Barr (Adam/Stuart, Erica and Brooke)."

Walker, of course, aided her own cause with her innate talent, looks, instincts and hard work. Two years after landing the part of Liza, she moved to the West Coast and took on the role of Santa Barbara's Eden Capwell - a role that earned her the 1989 Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy, along with legions of fans who cherished SB and her work on it. In 1989, she gave birth to Taylor (his father is Walker's third husband, Stephan Collins; he is not involved in Taylor'slife). In 1993 she came back to New York to play Tangie Hill on Guiding Light, a two-year interlude that ultimately proved dissatisfying. "I was not in a position where I could wrap my arms around the show," she recalls. "I didn't really deserve to be there any longer. It just didn't work. Sometimes it just doesn't happen. I keep thinking about what I could have done to make it different, but it didn't click. It's not anybody's fault. There was frustration on my part, which wasn't fair on my part to talk about after I left. It was just as much my responsibility as anyone's else's."

Then, in 1995, the invitation to reprise her role at AMC came her way. "I really wanted to come back and I was very grateful that they asked me back. There didn't seem to be any other choice. It felt like a homecoming." Asked if she's completely content with her lot on the show, she responds, "Absolutely. I have no reason not to be. It's been very fulfilling and the job is very challenging. I feel loved and appreciated because they're always giving me great things to do, and I work with great people. I'm extremely happy. Any great gift I've been given is because of what people taught me."

Told that Michael E. Knight (Tad) once called her "the most intuitive actress I've ever worked with," Walker squeals with delight. "Ah, isn't he the sweetest guy? Boy, it's a constant quest. I hope I bring passion to what we do. I hope I can rise to the level of my partner in a scene, and that I can give everything I have in me unconditionally. We all have our days when we're on the money, and those when we're not. You really count on each other. A favorite quote of mine that I keep posted on the mirror in my dressing room reads: 'Life expands and contracts in proportion to one's courage.' I like to think I'm intuitive, and I certainly strive to be the best actress I can be."

She accepts that "after all these years I have a pretty good grasp of what I can do well and what I can't do well. I believe iron sharpens iron. Here, at this place, you're around people who are the best at what they do, and you can shine yourself up pretty good." As for career aspirations, she went through what she dubs her "twisting in the wind time, trying to find out if I should really reach higher, raise the bar, so to speak. I put myself in the running (a number of made-for-television movie roles; a short-lived prime-time series, Palace Guard) and didn't enjoy it. I felt I was fed by this genre. There's something about the repertory feeling, the family feeling of being in daytime. People's minds work faster here and they assimilate quicker. There's that working-without-a-net feeling you get when you work every day and want to achieve the scene in one take that makes me think, why would I want to be anywhere else?"

 It's a truly serpentine path that's brought Walker to this joyous and fulfilled juncture in her journey. Centered and focused, her priorities in place and happy with the two main men in her life, she's come to embrace acceptance - and has found peace of heart in the process. As she says, "Relationships are not any one person's dominion; they really are a partnership. It's a wake-up call to realize that you've had relationships in which you were clueless. I look back on some that I've had and say, 'What did I do?' There's regret that I could have been so small, that I could have hurt someone's feelings. Yet, that's part of the learning experience, I suppose. Everyone has their own journey." SOW 5/30/00