Maureen Garrett: Daydream Believer

CBS Soaps In Depth
May 8, 2001

Feature Interview -- Daydream Believer:
Maureen Garrett (Holly) turned a shared fantasy with her late leading man into a reality

Long ago, Maureen Garrett was sure that she was going to be fired from her Guiding Light role of Holly Lindsey. So, naturally, no one is more amazed than her that for most of the past 25 years, she has called Springfield home.

But as much as the actress has come to enjoy her life at the soap, she admits that she occasionally has entertained thoughts of breaking away from her journalist alter ego and returning to her first love --- the theater. "You just get stale," she admits. "You fall into a routine and a regimen, and you bring less of yourself to [your character] than you would like to. You need to work in theater, I think, to develop as an actor."

That sentiment was shared by Garrett's longtime on-screen love/hate interest and off-screen friend --- the late, great Michael Zaslow, who played Holly's Machiavellian ex-husband, Roger Thorpe. "Zaslow and I used to talk about getting together a group," she relates. "I'd say, 'Oh, let's do Night of the Iguana . We can take it around." And he'd go, 'Yeah, yeah.'

"But," she continues, a hint of wistfulness in her voice, "we never did it."

Keeping The Dream Alive

But Garrett and Zaslow's dream eventually would come true --- even if, sadly, he wouldn't live to see it. When she witnessed her dear friend, "Zaz," struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis --- commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, the disabling neurological disorder that ultimately claimed his life --- something changed in her. "After Michael passed away," she declares, "I really thought, 'You've got to do the things that you think of doing.'"

So, with a newfound determination and resolve, Garrett created the Guiding Light Actors' Workshop. "I've set up my little office here in my [dressing] room, and I've stayed on top of it," she marvels. "Take off my actor's hate and put on a producer's hat. I call myself 'The Instigator,'" she adds, laughing at her relentless persistence in organizing the Workshop's monthly staged readings at the Helen Hayes Performing Arts Center in Nyack, NY.

Coming Soon To A Playhouse Near You?

Next, Garrett hopes to take the show on the road. "We're looking now at different venues so we can travel around," she reveals, obviously pleased as punch about the reception that her pet project has gotten not only from her co-stars, but fellow daytime actors as well. "Who knows? As we grow and develop as a theater company, we could actually put on real productions [as opposed to just readings] and rent a playhouse and do them."

Someone To Watch Over Me

In the meantime, as Garrett nurtures and cultivates the seed that was once just a figment of her imagination into a garden of opportunity for her fellow performers, she is finding the work to be quite therapeutic in healing from the loss of her onetime on-screen sparring partner. "In a way, you don't ever totally heal," she acknowledges. "But I think that the workshop has helped, because I sort of feel that [Zaslow] is right there with us.

"I've been through three very close losses," she continues. "Each one conjures or brings back the others. I've become the walking wounded for a while, so I strive to find a way to not let death be a disabling event. I've been striving for many years to get past the pain and celebrate, in a way, their contribution to my life."

Although the Workshop's functioning is a group effort by GL's devoted cast, in her own way, Garrett has found it to be her personal tribute to Zaslow. "Perhaps in a way, it is," she concludes. "I know Michael would have loved it. And I feel that he's proud of me that I'm doing it."

---Michelle Ann Moro.

Click here to read a sidebar to this article:
Return To Me:
Maureen Garrett shares her vision for Holly and Roger's Future

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