Louise Sorel’s Scheme: To Play the Villain : Television: But the humorously evil Vivian on ‘Days of Our Lives’ also aspires to a nighttime sitcom role, in which she could be more comedic.

The man you love is in love with another woman. What do you do to win him back?

If you’re Vivian Alamain on NBC’s “Days of Our Lives,” you become pregnant with your ex-lover’s child--by having yourself implanted with his sperm and your romantic rival’s egg. Then, for good measure, you trick the man into marrying you by telling him you are just filling in for his intended during their wedding rehearsal.

“They (the producers) tell me these things, and I reel out of the office,” says Louise Sorel, the actress who created the scheming, humorously evil Vivian three years ago. “I was sort of dumbstruck. But I think people enjoy what Vivian does--it seems to be more shocking.”

To say the least. Prior to her pregnancy--the baby has a Feb. 14 due date--Vivian’s exploits included various shootings, stabbings and poisonings; murdering several hospital patients while faking a coma; barely avoiding a lobotomy after being committed to a mental institution; and surviving a suicidal leap from a building.

During the summer of 1993, she was the star player of the show’s ratings-grabbing story line in which she used exotic herbs to induce a deathlike state in her nephew’s fiancee, Carly, whom she despised; Vivian then buried Carly alive. (Carly survived.)

“I’ve never said, ‘No, I’m not going to do this,’ because I’m hired to do it,” Sorel says of these sordid behaviors. Speaking in the cozy living room of her Westwood Village apartment, with her Wheaton terrier Jigs nearby and her collection of whimsical French animal marionettes on view, she bears Vivian’s sense of style and sophistication but little other resemblance to the conniving character.

“But, for this story, there has been a certain backlash from people who are trying to get pregnant. I have empathy for them. But I’m not responsible. I’m just the actress. I want to say, ‘Please don’t take this seriously. It’s only a show.’ ”

Not that Sorel does not add input whenever possible. When Vivian buried Carly, for instance, Sorel wanted to end the scene by doing more than merely dancing a jig, as called for in the script. She spent the lunch hour before the scene’s taping standing on the grave, thinking about her character’s love-hate relationship with her victim. The result: a half-maddened Vivian plucking a bouquet of flowers, intoning “She loves me, she loves me not” like a sort of modern-day Ophelia, then collapsing on the grave, laughing maniacally.

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At other times she has thrown in humorous references to everything from Laurel and Hardy to Hannibal Lecter in “Silence of the Lambs.” And, she says, “I question a lot, about character motivation. Then I realize that that’s getting too realistic. And there’s no time--it adds pressure to having to do 80 pages of dialogue a day.”

Working in soaps--she previously played the eccentric Augusta Lockridge on NBC’s defunct “Santa Barbara” and long-suffering Judith Sanders on ABC’s “One Life to Live”--took some adjustment, Sorel acknowledges.

“It’s a hard medium for me because I’m from a different arena. When you’ve studied, been brought up on stage, then there’s a different thought process here and not enough time. A lot of stage people in New York are stunned by what we do. But, overall, there are some moments where the quality of acting is damn good.”

The daughter of film producer Albert H. Cohen, Sorel’s theater work had begun in plays at Hollywood High. She joined a touring mime troupe as a teen-ager, won a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and was cast in her first Broadway show, “Take Her, She’s Mine” in 1961, shortly after graduation. Her film debut came in “The Party’s Over” in 1963, its location filming sparking a passion for travel--which, she says now, has inspired her to begin writing a book on travel tips. Other films include “Plaza Suite” and “Airplane II.”

Along the way there were two marriages (and divorces), to actors Herb Edelman and Ken Howard. And prime-time television roles galore: dozens of episodic guest spots and co-starring parts in the prime-time soap “The Survivors” and two sitcoms, “The Don Rickles Show” and “Ladies’ Man.” She moved to daytime soaps when “Santa Barbara” beckoned in 1984.

“I’ve been lucky--between Augusta and Vivian, they’re certainly not laid-back characters,” she reflects. “There’s an energy level, an expectation that something’s going to happen when Vivian’s in the room.”

Not surprisingly then, Sorel is nominated in the best scene stealer category for the “Soap Opera Digest Awards,” which she is also co-hosting tonight; she previously won as best villain. But, she says, she would like to be able to strut her comedic stuff, her dream job being a regular on a sitcom created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.

“I used to fixate on those monologues in ‘Designing Women,’ ” she says. “You wanted to wrap yourself in them--they were so intelligent, so witty. I know that’s where I belong.”

* “Days of Our Lives” airs weekdays at noon on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39). The “Soap Opera Digest Awards” airs tonight at 9 p.m., also on NBC.