Power Plays

By all measures, Udana Power was a success in Hollywood--not a marquee name but certainly diversified.

She was everywhere: stage roles at the Mark Taper Forum, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Tiffany. She was a familiar cabaret chanteuse, had done 250 commercials, hit TV series. But that wasn’t enough. She became a writer, penning a screenplay and contributing a carnal story of a housewife’s sexual awakening to the brisk-selling 1986 anthology, “Erotic Interludes: Tales Told by Women.”

She won an eight-year battle with a debilitating disease called Candida Albicans (caused by a toxic yeast organism in the digestive tract) that puffed up her vocal cords, stole her voice and stalled her acting career.

Then, suddenly, nightmare time. Her real portfolio (not the Hollywood kind), her security, all the money she had, disappeared on Black Monday (Oct. 19, 1987).

“I was left with $19.52 in hard currency,” says Power. “After five days in shock, during which I couldn’t eat, I began to take charge of my life. The rent was due.

“My agents were out to lunch. I had to take responsibility for my life. I got on the phone, called up casting directors, took day work on television, did word processing on my home computer for $6 an hour, fell back into three months of despondency, and then began every day to write out ‘I want a recurring role in a hit series.’ ”

Last month she landed the recurring role of Fran Woods on “General Hospital.” She has also revived her solo nightclub show with a stylish gig at the Gardenia lounge in West Hollywood (Wednesdays, through Aug. 10).

One of her lyrical monologues, “Late for a Date,” mocks female anxiety; another spicy vignette, “The Phone Call,” uproariously satirizes a lusting Hollywood movie director and his favorite partner, Dolores Del Rio.

Power’s conversation, her eyes always on the verge of leaving their sockets, is ingenuous but never naive: “To be just an actress is to be neurotic or nuts. Instead of waiting for the phone to ring--98% of being an actor is rejection--I have to be alive, in touch. A woman can’t depend on a man to supply all that well-being.

“So you have to deal with the buffeting. After you get to the edge of dying and you come back, then you know you can do anything.”