From: eec@leland.Stanford.EDU (Edie Cheng)
Subject: HF:Profiles from SOD
Summary:  Articles on Tammy Lauren and Sammi Davis-Voss
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 92 21:21:41 GMT


There were profiles on Tammy Lauren and Sammi Davis-Voss in Soap
Opera Digest this issue.  Here they are (reprinted without permission
and all typos mine...)

			The Company of Women

A Closer Look At Two Actresses Who Bring Modern Wisdom to the Postwar HOMEFRONT


Tammy Lauren (Ginger Szabo)

[There's a pictures of Lauren wearing casual clothes--jeans and a button-up
shirt with her legs crossed in front of her.  Her hair is loose, parted on
the side and looks much better on her than the 40's hairdos.]

"I'm walking on a back lot! I'm walking on a back lot!" an enthusiastic Ginger
says when she visits her first Hollywood studio.  It's portrayer Tammy Lauren
who imbues Ginger with her vivacious qualities.  And even though Ginger's trip
to Tinsel Town takes place in 1945 and Lauren is very much a nineties woman,
the two could be soul mates.

"If there is some of me in Ginger, I wouldn't be able to tell you, because I 
think the ultimate, toughest role for an actress is to play yourself," Lauren
notes.  "It definitely would be for me.  Ginger is very bouyant and very happy,
and there's a lot of energy about her."

Certainly Lauren had enough of that ambitious energy to successfully carry
her through the trials and tribulations of the transition from a child per-
former who made her debut in WHO'S WATCHING THE KIDS?, with James Belushi, to
an adult actress.  Although she's been acting since age seven, Lauren says she 
was never trained.  "I learned through experience, so I was basically 
mimicking.  I was a child actress, and that's all you do is mimic.  So I put
a picture in my head, and then I mimic it, you know?" she says.

Because she's just twenty-something, it seems it would be difficult for Lauren
to mimic the life-style of women who lived fifty years ago, but she contends
it's not.  "My father put it best.  He said that, funny enough, trends, mental
thought--they sort of go around in circles.  And all the problems women dealt
with then, we're still dealing with today.  So it's not difficult at all.  In
fact, it's probably much easier when you don't know the time period.  But my
father likes to talk a lot, and I heard a lot of stories about the war.  When 
women were women and men were men, you know?"

In the HOMEFRONT story, Ginger's man is fiance Jeff, with whom Ginger has 
shared many a steamy love scene.  Though they are awkward for her, Lauren 
maintains that love scenes are no big deal.  "I've had my first kiss maybe
a hundred times, so that's not awkward," she ways. "My favorite love scene
was in _Desperate for Love_.  I did it with Christian Slater and Brian Bloom
(ex-Dusty, ATWT)--both of whom are prettier than I am.  And the funniest thing
is that we shot most of these love scenes at this mill in Georgia.  We had a
week set aside just for love scenes. I'd usually go in with one guy, do a
scene, come back out, grab the other one and go back in.  Talk about feeling
a little promiscuous.  It was to the point where I'd come out and go, 'Next!
Come on in, boys.'  I would certainly have to say that the feeling of 
awkwardness surely leaves you then, because it's just a gag.  On the last
day of filming, the whole crew lined up outside the mill.  I must have been
beet red."

So maybe there is a little Tammy in Ginger.


Sammi Davis-Voss (Caroline Hailey)

[There's a picture of Davis-Voss wearing a slinky black lingerie-type tank
top.  Only her head and torso are shown, but it looks like she's wearing
jeans underneath.  Her arms are crossed protectively across her chest and
the lighting is very dramatic (so you can see her shadow behind her).]

"I was made for this role," says Sammi Davis-Voss of her alter ego, Caroline.
"I spent my whole life preparing for it!"

Though Davis-Voss isn't entirely serious, she presents a good case:  At
eighteen, she did a six-week run of a play about the effects of World War II
in Birmingham, England, near the town of Kidderminster, where she grew up.
At twenty-two, she did _Hope and Glory_, about the war's ravages in London,
which required volumes of research.  Finally, a native Brit, she's a trans-
plant to America.  "All put together, I feel I can really relate to Caroline,"
she says.

Still, life in Caroline's era took some getting used to.  "They didn't have 
all the things we're used to now, you know, anything goes.  We don't have that
innocence--that innocent desire for stuff."  This is not to say that Caroline
doesn't have desires--and sexual ones at that.  In light of the libidinous
roles she's had in _Hope and Glory_, _Lair of the White Worm_ and _Horseplayer_,
Davis-Voss says she's surprised, but has to admit that there might be type-
casting at work.

"I'm completely the opposite," she maintains.  "I mean, Caroline is very
outrageous.  But I do seem to be cast in these things, and I don't know why.
But women like that are very interesting.  Caroline is not a monster or any-
thing.  She's very clever and very intelligent, and she's using her sexuality
to get what she wants."  (Perhaps Davis-Voss learned a thing or two from her
characters; she met director Kurt Voss while working on _Horseplayer_ and 
married him six months later.)

Since Davis-Voss had already established herself as a feature film actress, it
may have come as a surprise to some that she was willing to commit to a long-
term television series.  But the actress doesn't see why it would.  "I always
take parts in projects that interest me--whether it's a movie or TV--if I can
read the whole script without getting bored.  This I could," she explains.  
"I spent the year prior to doing this reading scripts--mainly movie scripts--
and just throwing them in the bin because I found them just so boring.  You
know, the same old thing--same girl, same gun, same guy, just the same story.
I got fed up with it.  And then this came along, and I find it fascinating."
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