Guiding Light came at a time in my life where it was literally a godsend. I had had a dry spell for a long time.  At the time, I’m not even exaggerating – I probably had four jobs just to be able to audition during the day. And that was my life for almost four years.

When Guiding Light came along, it was the opportunity to have a 9 -5 secure job where I would be acting and it was just incredible. It was a dream come true for me. I had never studied acting or had a coach before, and it was probably the best school ever because, again I got to act every day; two cameras, very technical, everything was very fast.

It was hard. It was really, really hard. I don’t think what people understand about soaps, if you are the person who is starting that particular character, like it was in my case, I want to say the first six months of your job is really, really hard because you are constantly having to remind the audience of what your purpose in that story is; who you are, where you came from, what have you been up to before that and what you’re about to do. Every day I had pages, and pages and pages to memorize and try to perform.

I’m very appreciative of my Guiding Light years. It’s probably some of my worst and best moments on TV on that show.

Want to see Paula’s debut on the show?  It comes at 1:10 in this clip:

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