Hall Is No Longer Treading Water

According to actress Deidre Hall, there’s no death a soap opera can’t reverse.

“My character went down in a plane over water,” she recalls cheerfully of her 1986 departure from the NBC soap “Days of Our Lives.” Now back again as Marlena Evans (“she must’ve been treading water for five years”), Hall admits that “daytime takes a lot of flak for being such a flexible storytelling medium. But it really comes down to what the audience wants to see. They’ll suspend disbelief if they want a story to happen and accept a lot of silly things to get there.”

Hall (whose contract includes a deal for her to star in and develop prime-time movies for NBC) is well-known for her fan following, which includes an annual luncheon and impromptu get-togethers on the road.

Hall originally left “Days” when it became impossible to juggle it and her now-defunct series “Our House.” “You get spoiled by the spare time,” she says of work on a nighttime show. “I started taking classes, doing a few movies a year, having a different kind of life.” When the call came to return to “Days,” she was ready.

Raised in Florida, Hall began modeling at 18 (“I was this cute Barbie doll”), yet puts little stock in her looks. “I did ‘Our House’ with no makeup--I’m lucky bone-wise to get away with it. I do bleach my hair, but the rest fell from my parents.” She wasn’t always so secure. “I was a very unattractive child: scrawny, lanky, a huge nose. I had elephant ears at one point, buck teeth at one point. And my hair’s naturally curly; it takes up a room when it’s humid.”