Publication: City Cabaret Online
Author: Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date: February, 1999
"I am most definitely an actress who sings...but I have a love, love, love for both."-- Catherine Hickland
Blonde, blue-eyed, and upbeat, she has a warm smile and a complexion that Georgia would claim. She enjoys meeting people, chatting, greeting fans. She is frank, open, and down-to-earth. Is this Florida native a bit too "Little Mary Sunshine?"
Not quite. Catherine Hickland also happens to play one of the grand bitches of daytime drama. To One Life to Live viewers, she is Lindsay Rappaport Buchanan, a manipulator conniving enough to give Erica Kane a run for her money.
Yet there is more to this performer. Ms. B. is just one part of Catherine's professional life. The other side -- sentimental, romantic, lush -- is her music. Here she delves into the ballads she loves, her enthusiasm for the theater music and standards that came to her after she was grown and already an actress. Today, passionate about the songs she performs, she says...
"I give people what they already know, but I give it to them in a different way."
Background
"I love people. I always have."
Catherine Hickland was the baby of a family of five, growing up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with two older sisters, her father, Arthur, who was a dentist, and her mother, Mary. Catherine was five when her parents divorced, leaving her deeply affected; like other children of divorce, Catherine felt that she was to blame.
Throughout high school and one year of college, her concentration was always on acting. She enjoyed music and even auditioned for some parts in high school musicals, but she never studied voice. Her musical taste, she says, was contemporary and much like that of her peers. Early in her teens she was drawn to the sound of Karen Carpenter and Olivia Newton-John, ballads and love songs. It is interesting that today, years later, after Hickland expanded her professional life to include music, ballads are still the style she most loves.
"Musical theater was foreign to me, but now if you ask me what's on the radio, I wouldn't have a clue. All I listen to is musical theater and standards."
Hickland's musical career, however, lay still in the future. Her delicately defined features led to her first professional job in a National Airlines commercial; she played an airline stewardess in the "Fly Me" advertising campaign. In 1979, Hickland moved to Los Angeles and began acting in movies of the week and television shows like Vega$ and Eight is Enough, some films, and particularly daytime drama, where she built a strong identification beginning with Texas, playing "Dr. Courtney Marshall."
During these early professional years, casting directors suggested Hickland lose some weight. A bout of pneumonia accomplished just that; Hickland became fit and trim, however her fight against a few pounds spiraled into a battle with anorexia lasting from 1980 to 1982. She ignored the problem and continued work on Texas, until her family confronted her and Hickland agreed to seek special therapy.
"Food issues are something you always have to look out for because obviously it has to do with esteem. I was on television, so there's no denying it when someone can show you your living self on a piece of tape."
Meanwhile, Hickland had married at 20 a young man she'd known since she was a teenager. Even after she decided to end their marriage, the couple retained a strong bond.
"He knew me longer and better than anybody on the planet, and better than anybody else in my life. When we divorced, he didn't want it. And for the next 20 years, he'd tell me I was the love of his life. He was never threatened by anyone in my life, and he thought I was going to come back to him someday."
While that marriage was ending, Hickland left Texas, and not coincidentally this was the time that she was finally hospitalized for anorexia. Once stabilized, Hickland joined General Hospital, and then Capitol where she played twins, "Julie Clegg" and "Jenny Diamond" until the show ended in 1987.
"I think 1987 was the last time that I had to deal with the anorexia issue. . That's good news for me, because in the past whenever it would rear its ugly head in my life, it's always in some stressful period in my life, divorce or some out-of-control in my life."
In 1984, she married actor, David Hasselhoff (Knight Rider), a marriage attracting great publicity; it was followed by a divorce five years later with even more tabloid fury. Shortly after the cancellation of Capitol, and while ending her marriage to Hasselhoff, Hickland left the United States and moved to Rome where she lived for two years. There she worked on several Italian films.
"I went to the International Language School. I thought I might become a translator in films."
In the early '90's, Hickland returned to Los Angeles. There she met actor Michael E. Knight, and they married in June, 1992. They soon moved to New York where Knight was returning to his role as the popular "Tad Martin" in All My Children. She still, however, remained close friends with her first husband who came to accept that with Knight, Hickland had found the right life partner.
In New York, Hickland joined the cast of Loving, which later became The City. She was saddened to see this series end in 1997. Around the same time, her father died. Then her good friend, her first husband, died. Hickland was devastated and spiraled into depression. She talks about the "journey to herself" and says about the loss of her first husband,
"I had lost one person for sure, who was always there for me, always had been, always would be, and now he was gone."
She felt she had nothing, not even the strong marriage with Knight..
"I didn't care about it. I didn't care about anything. Even me. I didn't care if anything happened to me...I'd never experienced despair, anxiety, panic., depression; I never experienced that in my life...
Actually when I went through the depression, I lost a lot of weight but I didn't go into the danger zone, which is around 90 pounds...I'm not in denial about (anorexia) anymore. I understand how to deal with it now."
She also decided, "Now if anyone says to me, "I'm depressed," I sit and give them my full attention, let them talk it out."
Today, Catherine and Michael live in Manhattan with their dog and six cats. In what spare time she has, Hickland works with West End Inter-Generational Center for abused and battered Women with young children who need to get out of their environment. This center on the Upper West Side accepts mothers and children to live there for one year. During that time, the mothers go to trade school, and the elderly, who live on upper floors, help care for children in a day-care center. Everyone has a purpose.
Hickland organizes a yearly big Christmas party with dinner, Santa and toys for children (which Hickland used to pay for herself, but in the last two years, Rosie O'Donnell had them donated by her sponsors). Soap opera stars ("especially hunks") come to meet and chat with the mothers.
She also kept in mind an experience from her beginning days which helps in her relationship with fans.
"I was a big Cybill Shepherd fan when I was growing up...She was just beautiful. When I grew up and was on a soap opera, I was invited to take part in a celebrity event. Cybill Shepherd was also there, and I was so excited that I went up to her, and said, 'Hi, I'm so thrilled to meet you!'
"(Cybill) was so cold and rude and made me feel so embarrassed that I had interrupted her important life. Now when people come up to me, they are the only people on the planet. And that's because of what happened with Cybill Shepherd."
Over the years, Catherine Hickland has come to develop a self-confidence that has always been inside her, that helps now in both her personal and professional life.
"I've always been very
confident of who I am and what I can bring to a relationship. I have a
lot of heart in me and a lot of love. If I have that in my personal
life, I can have that in every other area of my life as well. Part of
that just comes from not thinking you have to be the best. I don't worry
about that. I just have to have enough for me. Then I can make something
of that."
Read on about Catherine's career in acting and now singing
Acting Career
"Part of my whole being is not giving any life to fear at all, because that will stop you from having anything good in your life...In last ten years, I've been able to understand."
This philosophy has spurred Catherine Hickland to keep expanding her craft from television movies to films (including, The Last Married Couple in America, Witch Craft, and Sweet Justice.) She even appeared early on in Hee Haw Honeys (with Kathie Lee Gifford). But it's on the daytime serials where she garnered the most attention. About her multi-layered characters, she says,
"I have to think about the subtext all the time. Everyone in soap operas are under so much pressure, it's up to me to keep my character honest, and I'm always trying to find where I can inject some kind of history so that (viewers) can understand I'm not just acting out. So that they can understand me."
While in Los Angeles, Hickland and husband, Michael E. Knight performed together starred in a play, Run for Your Wife. When they moved from Los Angeles to New York City, Hickland, a high energy person, was restless with no job for herself. She began going to the theater and eventually singing, and she continued with her music even when she joined Loving in 1993 which segued into The City.
But the plum part came her way in 1998, when she was invited to join the cast of One Life to Live as "Lindsay Rappaport".
"I play this really bitchy character. I'm not worried about people not liking me, I'm worried about people being bored by me. That's my big concern. I want people to know something's going to happen when I walk into the room..."
The fans are fascinated by Lindsay, although they may not like her and may actually be a bit wary of her.
"Sometimes when a someone who doesn't know me sees me after the show, they don't come very close to me. They almost pass the paper and pen over on a stick...And often, when strangers see me on the street, they just start yelling at me, 'You have just gone too far!' and I just kind of stay in character for that, and say, 'Well, you know she had it coming!'"
Hickland has found she can utilize the experiences of her life:
"It's so ironic that as an actress, especially, the older you get, the more you have to bring of yourself to a performance -- the richness of your life, the ups, the downs that build us to who we are. The sad part is by the time you reach your '40's, your performance level is the highest it ever is, but you can't get a job because it's a youth market right now."
It's not surprising that Hickland already has plans for the time -- not yet -- when her acting days are over.
"When I finish acting, I will be directing and producing, and I think I have a lot to contribute. I think I can put together a really great show. But something I learned is that I'll hire somebody to help. I'll have my hands on it, but I won't take on everything myself...I know that day will come. But I'm not ready to give up performing yet."
As for the inevitable setbacks?
"You know, in the scheme of life, it's no big deal."
--Elizabeth Ahlfors--
Honors
January 2, 1999: TV Guide nomination for Best Supporting Actress 1998
November 24, 1998: Soap Opera Digest Nominations for Outstanding Female Scene Stealer
February 20, 1996: Winner of Soap Opera Magazine's Star of the Week
1996 Best Actress, The City, Soap Opera Update
1987 Tegegatto Award, Milan, Italy
Singing Career
"I'd love to introduce this music to a new generation, who, like me, weren't raised with standards, like Sinatra and Broadway. I want them to be exposed to it, to know about it, to want to know about it. I want to present it in a way that's new and appealing to a younger generation. Because this music is so timeless."
During her down time when she and Michael first moved to New York, Catherine inadvertently found a new love and a new goal.
"I started going to Broadway musicals and I just went nuts! I'd never gone to musicals...I thought, 'I really want to learn now to do this.'"
Even while working in her new soap, Loving, and although daytime drama is demanding work, Hickland now had another focus in her life. She was determined to develop her musical skills.
"I fell in love with it..This music is so timeless. This is just magic."
Amazingly, she has done just that. Hickland found a voice teacher and in 1995, she was on Broadway and later touring the country; she had landed herself the juicy part of "Fantine" in Les Misérables.
Continuing to study the music she loves, Hickland has also found herself drawn to harmony groups. She made a CD, ....Simply Broadway, featuring Marsh Hanson and Craig Rubano, who also sang in Hickland's latest show, Once More With Feeling, at New York's China Club.
Hickland writes her own patter for her shows, but it's more in the form of a blueprint; she leaves room for improvising along the way.
"I pick the music first, and then build the story around the music."
Music, however, will not be a part of 'Lindsay Rappaport Buchanan' on One Life to Live. Although Hickland was asked when she joined the cast if she'd like to incorporate singing into Lindsay's life, she declined.
"I do not want to be 'the singing bitch.' It takes viewers away from the character."
Even Hickland must be amazed at this new turn in her journey.
"I started singing in my
'30's -- and not my early '30's either. You have to keep reinventing
yourself somehow."
Musical Shows
Once More With Feeling (1999)
China Club
Broadway hits and favorite standards, performed with Catherine's former cast mates from Les Miserables, Marsh Hanson and Craig Rubano.
Phil Hall's musical arrangements (composer of Paper Mill Playhouse production of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde)
Stage Manager: Courtney Phelps. Ms. Phelps is a freshman at NYU, who was also stage manager of the Asian Company of "Falsettos."
"This is a show that we want to take to a showroom. A slick version, one-hour version of the show. in theaters that won't be too expensive for audiences."
Boys On the Side (1996)
Triad
A personal statement based on her marriages and divorces, Hickland sang music from Broadway shows and standards.
Broadway/Soap Opera Singers' Concert (December 1995)
National Symphony of Lyons, France
"Fantine" in Les Miserables
(1995 on Broadway; 1997 national tour)
Words About Catherine
"In her new lease on Life, Hickland is steamy, funny, witchy, insecure, heart-breaking - everything we could want in a soap opera vixen. And she alone is reason enough to pick up the One Life To Live habit." Michael Logan, TV Guide, August 22, 1998
"Catherine is honest, hard working, and has the most infectious personality I've ever encountered. She is also a director's dream...She is very talented as well as a fan of the musical theatre and has befriended and disarmed an entire theatrical community in record time." Richard Jay-Alexander, Executive Producer and Associate Director of Les Misérables, August, 1997
"The CD, featuring Broadway stars Marsh Hanson and Craig Rubano, is a beautiful collection of Broadway tunes that showcases Hickland's delicate evocative voice. One is swept up by Hickland's obvious love for her craft, as she hits all the right notes as an artist and dreamer." Soap Opera Update,August 19, 1997.
"Whether she's sneaking around Sydney's penthouse searching for potential blackmail material, or doing shooters of tequila at the City Bar with Buck, Tess Wilder's an attention getter. For her ability to make the many facets of Tess' charismatic personality so fascinating, The City's Catherine Hickland wins Soap Opera Magazine's Star of the Week honors." Anne Marie Allocca, Soap Opera Magazine, February 20, 1996.
Recordings
"...Sincerely, Broadway." - Catherine Hickland. 1998
Just click on the title to order directly from Music Boulevard.
"...Sincerely, Broadway." Catherine Hickland. 1998
Just click on the title to order directly from Amazon.
Schedule
One Life to Live as
Lindsay Buchanan
February 15: In concert with Gay Men's Choir
April 23: Catherine Hickland will teach a course at the Learning Annex on, "Soap Operas and the Business of Show Business." But she deals with personal life too, being afraid, asking, "What's the worse thing that can happen?"
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