:::Catherine Hickland Appreciation Site:::

Take everything you know about Catherine Hickland and throw it out the window.

Forget about it. Don't talk about it. Don't even think about it.

Because it's not the entire story. It's not the real Catherine Hickland.

To many, Catherine Hickland is this tremendously upbeat person who is almost always in a good mood. So much so it's scary.

"Every day that I wake up I think, 'Oh good, I'm still here, everything works.' And I know it sounds weird, but I do live every day as thought it's my last," she says.

Michael E. Knight (Tad, AMC) says he's never met anyone like her. He loved her so much he married her.

She throws the most incredible parties. After a YOUNG & RESTLESS producer attended her lavish wedding (the mother of all parties), he said that she should be a producer.

She actually wants to direct.

But the one thing that will rock Catherine Hickland from her sunny disposition is if she doesn't sing on Broadway in a year's time. Specifically, in "Phantom of the Opera." It brings her more joy than anything else. She's seen it something like 14 times since she moved back to New York over a year ago.

Sure many actors want to do Broadway, but very few have the kind of determination that Catherine Hickland has. Her voice teacher has only been training her for four months but told me, "She's halfway there."

"I don't believe in coincidence," she explains. "I think coincidence and luck are blessings, and I think that it was a miracle that I was brought back to New York to find what it is that I have a passion for--because I never would have found that if I were living in L.A.," she points out during our lunch in Soho.

I was with Catherine Hickland (watching "Phantom") the day that she made the decision to sing on Broadway. And I couldn't stop laughing. After all, here we were sitting in this beautiful theater waiting for the show to start; and she pulls out this very worn waxed paper bag from Dunkin' Donuts…just a little snack before showtime. "Well, I had to hide it," Catherine defends, while completely jumping over the dichotomy that we weren't making cappuccino plans, "because you're not allowed to take food into the theater, and I wanted my donut!"

This quirkiness presents itself at just the right times. "I am a little off," she claims.

Her voice isn't. It never fails to impress the listener--that tremendous range reaching out from what some thought to be an unsuspecting source.

Not any more.

SEX

Some people are uncomfortable by the subject.

Some people constantly pursue it.

It's been the cornerstone of the character that Catherine Hickland creates on LOVING-Tess.

"I love when I can go to work and I can be Tess," Catherine offers. "I can be assertive in such a way that I would never get away with in my own life. She's very sexual. She's always thinking with sex in mind. It's kind of a curiosity thing with me. In my mind, Tess was always the girl in high school that got used all the time. Everybody wanted to sleep with her, but nobody wanted to take her home to meet their mother."

Catherine does feel sexier now than when she was younger. In fact, she says wisdom improves sexuality.

"After making so many mistakes--in my case how many mistakes could I make by the time I was 30? Practically publicly. I think sexuality has so little to do with looks, and so much more with knowing who you are. It's hard to explain."

Catherine thinks that any woman can be sexy. "I think if I wouldn't have been an actress, I would have been a makeup artist because I love the process of finding a woman's beauty and bringing it out. Everybody has at least one good feature, no matter what."

"When I did the limo scenes on LOVING (sex in the backseat, need we say more?), I got a fan letter from someone in a small town in middle America who wanted to do what Tess did. She wanted to rent a limousine, and she wanted to know where I got those stockings and what to wear with them; and I thought, 'God bless you, woman!' No wonder you are still married after 20 years.

And I thought, 'See, it's not such a bad thing to have sex on television if it's done in a certain way, or even partial nudity, because I think it gives people the idea that it can be exciting.'"

"So, I wrote back to that woman, and I told her where I got the stockings. Most of us, and I say this with total experience, are just too damned tired at the end of a normal day to go to special steps like putting on sexy lingerie and finding new ways to keep things alive."

Has Catherine Hickland always been comfortable with her sexuality?

"It's been hard work," she answers. "I'm really shy. When it comes down to sex or intimate relations, I've always been really modest. When it came down to taking off my clothes, even in front of other girls showering in the gym in high school, I used to think if the school were to catch on fire, I didn't know if I would take that little square towel that they give you that doesn't cover anything and cover my front, letting the boys out back playing football just see my rear; or if I would cover my rear; or if I would wrap the towel around my head and hope nobody knew who I was. I was mortified with the thought of being nude in front of another person. That stayed with me up until the last two years. Now, it doesn't bother me at all, I think that comes with being comfortable with who you are. You shouldn't be ashamed of what you are, or who you are or what you look like."

GOODBYE FIRST IMPRESSIONS

That last time that I interviewed Catherine, she was just starting the show and didn't have very many friends in New York. She had trouble with co-stars.

"It was not a cushiony beginning for me at LOVING. I felt that there was some resentment from a few actresses there and that's very real. I don't mind saying that--it's not a fairy-tale life. The first three months were very hard for me. There were days when I didn't want to go to work. I knew that in time that it would work out, but it was like being in an initiation. People have to get to know you and your personality and I have a big personality," she admits. "I'm very extroverted, and many people who meet you when you're in a good mood almost all of the time think that you are phony or not sincere. So there's resentment there. Now that I've been there a year, I have so many friends at the show."

HER DEEPEST SECRETS

Hickland recognizes that after that initial awkward period passed, her life began to snowball. The role felt better; she and Michael moved into a great, new apartment, her voice lessons began…

So what's missing?

"I can't think of anything," she's glad to answer.

Although she has plenty of friends, Catherine once told me that she didn't have the kind of friend to tell her deepest secrets to--is that still the case?

"Yes, I still don't," she giggles.

So what does she do with them? Does she hold them inside?

"Yeah, I do," she pauses. "There aren't that many, I used to talk a lot to my friend Russell who has since moved to L.A."

Only her hairdresser knows for sure. Russell was her hairdresser at LOVING.

"I'm not a deeply trusting person to begin with," she confesses. "I don't have a lot of bitterness. A great deal of my childhood was spent alone, so I didn't develop those skills of trust."

She says that when she was younger she did the craziest things. She was a hellcat. She was raised by her father until 15, when her father said she had to live with her mother because she was too much of a tomboy.

100 PERCENT WOMAN?

"Now I think I'm all-girl," Catherine updates. "I love wearing dresses, but it's funny I don't think of myself as a woman. Isn't that weird? I still think of myself as a girl. Now why is that?" she wonders.

Maybe it is because the image of women is changing, and what Catherine necessarily thought of as a woman when she was younger is something she doesn't have to be like. Work with that for an answer.

She does believe in change in the most drastic cases. "I would be very depressed if I thought that I couldn't change. I do believe that generally people don't change; but if you seek change--spiritually seek change--and want it bad enough, then you can change your whole person. Even your character."

Many people don't believe characters can change. Once a sleaze, always a sleaze. Once a user, always a user.

"I don't believe that you have to be where you come from," Catherine insists. "But you have to want change, you have to work at it and you have to pray for it. There is a lot of work that goes into it."

High on the list, believe it or not, of things that Catherine would like to change about herself is that she would like to be a better friend.

"Some people think they know me very well, but they are maybe in the 40-50 percent mark; and they think they are at their 120 percent mark. I would like to let people in deeper."

She doesn't because "somewhere back there," there was a deep hurt.

"I've never had my heart broken," she reveals.

"No one has ever left me," Catherine clarifies," and that's because I always leave first. I think that's a statement in itself about me. If you think about it, if you leave first, then the chances of you being left are less and less and less. I know that I'm not a co-dependent anymore. Those old habits are gone. I would say that they come up and I have to deal with them. People still push my co-dependent buttons, but it's up to me to lovingly say no.

FEARS

"I have a really great life. I have a husband who loves me a lot, and I'm crazy about him so I don't really know what I'm missing. People tell me that they are so scared to love a certain person because they are afraid that they are going to hurt them, and to me I'm like, 'What do you mean? Just go for it!' But I'm not putting it all out there like they are."

Then Catherine takes a quick look at her own situation: "If Michael left me, I would be in a bad way. This is the deepest relationship that I've ever had."

"I know that I've been dealt a better hand than a lot of people have. I feel tremendous compassion for those who don't have anything and have lost all hope. I think, 'How come I have this life?' But I've worked really hard for this life, and this happiness."

Lunch is over and we're at the store next door. As Catherine sits down to try on her new black street boots (very downtown) with bold yellow laces that cover half of her lower leg, I ask her if this is the best time of her life.

"So far," she smiles.