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My First Role
Daytime Stars Open Their Career Scrapbooks
by Naomi Rabinowitz
Soap Opera Digest
March 23, 1999

She got her start as a circus clown, played Days of Our Lives's Adrienne and is currently Another World's Paulina. But did you know that Judi Evans Luciano got her soapy start-and an Emmy!-playing Guiding Light's Beth from 1983-1986?

"Beth was a great character," Luciano recalls. "I loved her. She was sweet and innocent, yet she was also smart. Michael [O'Leary, Rick], Krista [Tesreau, Mindy] and I were all hired around the same time, which was nice. The three of us and Grant Aleksander [Phillip] were very close.

"I remember that I couldn't stop giggling on my first day. Beth's stepfather had beaten her up, and she was supposed to be unconscious. That was how I first appeared...in the hospital.

"One of my favorite storylines was the one where Beth and Phillip ran away to New York. It was Christmastime, and a lot of the scenes were shot in Central Park."

Phillip and Beth's relationship took a turn for the worse, thanks to Phillip's indiscretions with Mindy. "Phillip and I almost got married," Luciano explains, "but then I found out that Mindy, who was supposed to be my maid of honor, was pregnant with Phillip's child. That wasn't very nice of her!"

"I think that Beth really started to come into her own when she was with Lujack [Vincent Irizarry]," muses Luciano. "She was able to see the man within. She was attracted to him because she saw that he was wild, but had a good heart."

"I got to work with Frances Fisher [ex-Suzette] while Beth and Lujack were trying to solve a mystery. I really like working with Frances. She was a very nice woman, and she was also very funny.

"I still love Beth today. [While on GL], it hit me that I was in New York City doing something I'd always wanted to do: act. It was a magical time for me."