Soap Actress Won’t Quit Her Day Job

Many daytime drama actors dream of working on a prime-time series and leaving the soap-opera world behind. Not Victoria Rowell. She landed a job with Dick Van Dyke in CBS’ Friday night mystery “Diagnosis Murder” but kept her job in the network sudser “The Young and the Restless.”

“I’m very happy at ‘Young and the Restless,’ ” she said emphatically during a recent interview at a Westside restaurant. “I don’t see the soap as a vehicle or a step into stardom or features. To me, it’s all one process. Work is work.”

And work she does. Besides the daytime and nighttime series, Rowell dabbles in feature films, fulfills duties as Oil of Olay spokesperson, promotes her Rowell Foster Children’s Scholarship Fund, keeps up her classical ballet work and is a single mother to 4-year-old Maya.

“It seems like my whole life was a preparation for this (kind of schedule),” she said. “My foster mother was an amazing woman. She was a self-sufficient widow who had already raised 10 of her own children. When she had the three of us, she was a senior citizen. She also ran a 60-acre farm.” Rowell tries to emulate that energy for accomplishment.

“I can’t really say there is a recipe for how I get things done, but I have a couple of calendars, my Filofax is always close at hand and I have wonderful people helping me,” Rowell said.

On the acting end, producers from each show coordinate her schedule to make sure there aren’t any overlaps. On the personal side, she shares a personal assistant with actress Lee Purcell and has part-time help at home.

“She’s got a great disposition,” observes Nancy Bradley Wiard, coordinating producer for “The Young and the Restless.” “It’s phenomenal that she can keep her characters straight while maintaining a wonderful sense of humor, be a good mother to Maya and have a regular life.”

Barry Steinberg, supervising producer of “Diagnosis Murder,” agrees. “It’s amazing how she finishes up on ‘Y&R;’ and gets in her car and drives herself to ‘Diagnosis Murder’ and can rush through makeup and be Amanda,” he said. “I think she’s just enjoying it so much and wants to do it so much that she just does it.”

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“I love it,” Rowell says, noting that she’s always done other projects while working on the soap (“Distinguished Gentleman,” HBO’s “Full Eclipse” and many television guest-starring roles) and hopes to continue to do so. She also seems to be good at it: Rowell recently was named best daytime actress at the NAACP Image Awards, and on Friday she’ll find out whether she’s won in the best scene-stealer category on the “Soap Opera Digest Awards” on NBC.

Rowell began her entertainment career as a classical ballet dancer at age 8. Later, she taught ballet and worked as a model. While pregnant with Maya, she worked as a secretary, but was eager to start an acting career. In 1990, she landed the role of Dru on “The Young and the Restless.”

When she started playing the illiterate thief, a homeless victim, there was concern among some black viewers that she was playing a negative stereotype.

“I could understand that,” she said. “But I also knew that there was going to be a metamorphosis (that would) turn this character around. I mean, we were able to incorporate my own classical ballet background into the story line!”

“Y&R;’s” strong black story line is a subject near and dear to Rowell, because she was taken from her first foster family at the age of 2 1/2 because they were white and she was half white. It’s a fault in the foster-care system that Rowell would like to change. But it only confirms her commitment to teach her daughter about all of her heritage.

When Rowell gently asks her platinum-blond haired, blue-eyed daughter what color she is, Maya answers proudly, “Black and white.”