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In The Lap Of Luxury
Tina Sloan plays a plain-Jane nurse on GL, but her own life is a lot more Spaulding-like.
by Valerie Davison
Soap Opera Weekly
June 20, 2000

Once, as he walked by her at a party, a stranger whispered in Tina's ear, "You are the classiest woman on daytime television." He was onto something. Even with her hair pulled back in a workday ponytail, clad in a generic nurse's uniform and confined to the grandma ghetto inhabited by her character, Guiding Light's Lillian Raines, Sloan's intrinsic elegance is hard to miss. Put her in a silk suit, give her a coif, take her to lunch, and voila! You have a swan. One has to ask why this patrician beauty isn't playing the Queen Mum of San Cristobel, or at least a stylish, blue-blooded counterpoint to Carmen Santos. "Well, exactly," says the lady, in her familiar, no-nonsense staccato. "I should never have been a nurse. I should have tons of money and use it brilliantly." After all, that's what she does in real life.

Tina Sloan has about her that aura of well-born grace and relaxed pre-possession most often seen in those accustomed to economic security and the finer aspects of life. The daughter of a successful lawyer, she grew up in Bronxville, an affluent New York suburb, and seems to have lived the American dream. "I had parents I liked, a brother and sister I liked, and come from a very stable background," she acknowledges, thoughtfully. "I was a pretty little girl, very smart in school, and had lots of boyfriends. And it's true. When you have money, you have summers to sit around and think about things; to answer the questions without having to work. You can write or travel, if that's what you want to do. I've traveled all over the world." Married to a prosperous businessman for the past 25 years, and herself employed at GL for the past 17 years (to say nothing of her success in commercials and occasional film roles), she can pick up at a moment's notice, if she likes, and go skiing in Vail, Colo., for the weekend. She's actively involved with the Central Park Conservancy and Outward Bound, and has climbed mountains in Africa and Nepal, almost on a whim, as well as run marathons in three different countries.

"I don't know why I do these things," she says, pensively. "I do love to challenge myself, and not much intimidates me. I just love projects, but I'm not driven. I could be, though, if I wanted to." Mindful of, but remarkably unspoiled by her blessings, Sloan says that even she has felt the occasional protruding spring from within her velvet couch. Her first husband died, she lost a sister, and for years she was denied the child she desired. "I've had tragedy in my life, too," she says. "Having tons of money isn't the answer, and anyone who has it knows that."

In 1965, fresh out of Manhattanville College, she married a budding playwright, and it wasn't until she appeared in one of his plays and was noticed by the Ford Modeling Agency that a career in show business really occurred to her. "I made so many commercials they used to call and ask for a 'Tina Sloan type,' " she says. "I made so much money, I'd pay the rent for my poorer actor friends." In the '70s she spent two years on Somerset as Kate Thornton Cannell, a year on Search for Tomorrow (as Patti Whiting), followed by Another World (as Olivia Delaney) in 1980. In 1983 she received a call from GL producer Gail Kobe and was offered the part of Lillian Raines, a nurse in the throes of a violently abusive relationship. "She said she was giving me the part without an audition because she knew me from Somerset," Sloan says, "and that they needed a strong woman to play a weak one; otherwise it wouldn't be interesting. It was only supposed to last for six months and it has been 17 years now, for which I'm very grateful."

From the beginning Lillian's fortunes were tightly bound to her daughter, Beth, who was raped by her stepfather, Lillian's battering husband. Sloan is both quick and eager to point out that the antecedents for the continuing bond between Beth and Phillip lie in this original story. "Phillip was the one who helped Beth through the incest," Sloan explains. "She confided in him, and he took her away. Those two would have done everything for each other. Then new head writers came along, had her meet someone else and not want him anymore. That would never have happened, and that's the way I still play it; like Harley is a total joke. I act like she doesn't exist."

Instead of being written out, Lillian was eventually given her own story involving breast cancer. "She had a lumpectomy," Sloan says, "and I painted a scar on my breast and left it on all the time, so I'd know what it was like. Lillian was very secretive about it, and wouldn't tell Beth. She said, 'I can't deal with her upset. I have to deal with it myself.' I thought that was the best line." Ironically, during the six months it took the story to play out Sloan herself developed a lump. It was benign, but she didn't tell anyone, either. "I didn't tell my husband and I didn't tell my son," she confesses, quietly. "And once I found out I was fine. I still didn't say anything." Also intriguing was a connection she made, in the course of her research, between her character's history and real-life case studies. "Abused women often develop breast cancer," she says. "I read that, and I also observed it among people I knew. It's not across the board, of course, but these women do tend to be very kind, giving people. I got letters from women saying, 'I didn't have time to cry for myself. I was too worried about my children and my family.' As far as I was concerned, that said it all."

That storyline led to yet another -- a love affair with Ed Bauer, a married doctor she worked with at the hospital. Such a tale should have kept her in focus for some time. Instead, in a masterpiece of miscalculation, it resulted in her banishment to storyline limbo, where she has pretty much been ever since. "Lillian had always been in love with Ed," Sloan says. "He knew about the abuse, and he was the only one she confided in about the breast cancer. I think he slept with her because he felt sorry for her. She, of course, was happy for the first time in years." But when the writers killed Ed's wife in a car crash, audience response was so negative that the whole affair was shelved. "They didn't expect such a reaction," Sloan muses. "People were furious at Lillian, though Ed was involved in it, too. They blamed her, not him. That kind of thing gets me crazy. It was too bad. I wouldn't even have minded Lillian becoming a bad person at this point. It might have been fun. Instead, I was back-burnered."

Never one to cry over spilt milk, anyway, much of Sloan's attention was already occupied elsewhere. In 1980, at age 37, she had given birth to her first and only child, Renny, who recently completed his freshman year at Harvard. "It's the best thing I ever did," she says, grinning broadly. "I loved having a boy, and I've loved all his girlfriends, too. One of them I e-mail every now and then, just because I miss her. I go up to Boston, take him and his friends out to dinner, and have loads of fun. He's very closemouthed, and not all of them know what I do. So when several of them went to see Celebrity, which I was in, they went, 'Hey, Renny! There's your mom!' If I had a child at 20 or 25, dear god, the poor child! Because I had all my issues to work through. But at 37, hopefully, you've worked through some of them." And between Renny and the soap, she wasn't even too disturbed that the phone had stopped ringing so much. "It did sort of surprise me though," she admits, "not to be working a lot, because the commercials had come so easily, and the soaps had come so easily. Everything had come quite easily, workwise. And I certainly noticed, when I walked down the street with some young girls from daytime, that nobody looked at me. I was very used to being looked at, when I was younger. But you know what? We have to pass the baton. It's time to let that go. I went through a little phase where I thought, 'Well, this is the age I am. Maybe I should let my hair go gray. Maybe I should let myself be what I am.' With the blond hair, I don't look enough like TV's idea of a grandmother. I'd get more work if I had white hair, but you know what they'd have me doing? Dentures and diapers! It's disgusting. I'm not about to do that yet."

Actually, she is letting herself be what she is: a beautiful woman who is no longer 17 or 27. She's 57, and makes no bones about it, even though she has to deal with dubious compliments like, "Gosh, I hope I look as good as you when I get old." "I may be the only actress you know who doesn't make any bones about it," she says. "Why should I? This is what 57 looks like. I'd rather tell the truth and have people say, 'God, you look great,' than lie and have them wonder."

If nothing else, it gives Beth Chamberlin, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Sloan, an up-close view of what she may look like in 20 years. When Chamberlin took over the role of Beth in 1989, she wasn't totally new to it. "Judi Evans had left and we thought Beth had died," Sloan says, speaking as both Tina and Lillian. "One day I (Lillian) see a girl walking down the street I think is her. I run up, she turns around, and of course, it isn't. Beth Chamberlin was the extra who played that girl." Sloan's affection for Chamberlin, and Hayden Panettiere, who plays her granddaughter, Lizzie, is palpable. An exquisite, framed photograph of the three of them sits prominently beneath a living room table lamp. Nor is that the only fusion between her private and professional worlds. She recounts with relish an occasion where an actor who formerly played Alan Spaulding looked around the room, an exercise in understated luxury, and remarked, "Now this is what the Spaulding living room should look like." Maybe it will, eventually. Only recently Lizzie was heard saying to her grandmother, "Nana, I dreamed you and Grandpa got married." Out of the mouth of babes, fans hope, to the writers ears. "What a great idea," Sloan agrees, her green eyes glowing. "Lillian should be married to Alan, wear beautiful clothes and bring an elegance to the show that would be wonderful to have." #