Soap Opera’s Story Line Hits Close to Home

It’s an especially busy day on the Burbank set of “Days of Our Lives.” The cavernous place is crowded with visitors, and all attention is focused on an area dressed with potted trees and shrubs strung with tiny white lights to look like a city park on the evening of a charity fund-raiser. Red and white balloons are so plentiful that actor Josh Taylor struggles to get them out of his way to take his position for the next scene. John Aniston, Jennifer Aniston’s father and one of the show’s leading men, wipes his brow and waits for his cue. Actress Nadia Bjorlin interviews with the “Soap Center” TV crew, while the production manager tries to herd dozens of extras into their positions.

“I need you to come back on the set,” he tells the drifting crowd. “We’re going to need to take positions so we can continue.”

Few people acknowledge him.

On a day in late August, the cast and crew are portraying the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s annual “Light the Night” walk, an event that takes place in real life this month in several U.S. cities to raise money and awareness for the diseases.

“Days” producers deliberately incorporated the walk into the show’s September story line to help publicize the charity. To make the story believable, writers gave leukemia to Bjorlin’s character--the beautiful orphaned opera star Chloe Lane--not knowing that Bjorlin’s real-life father, Swedish composer Ulf Bjorlin, died of leukemia six years ago.

The 21-year-old actress initially hesitated at the idea. “At first it was scary,” she said during a break. “It’s something that’s so close to home and it still hurts.”

Ultimately, Bjorlin went along with the story and portrayed the same symptoms that she watched her father experience: bruising, fatigue, fainting and then the side effects of chemotherapy.

“It was tough for all of us,” she said.

She said the role was difficult but it helped bring her family closer and provided a new understanding of her father’s illness.

The society’s members are certainly appreciative of her efforts. During a break in the filming, the group’s L.A. chapter senior executive director, Jane Warner, promised the cast: “We’re converting people to ‘Days of Our Lives’ watchers all over L.A.!”

Anniversary Bash

Vincent Longo just celebrated his fifth year of applying color to famous faces, and for the anniversary, the New York-based celebrity makeup artist decided to fly a few friends to Cannes for a weekend of pampering and a little shindig.

(Longo has clients who really don’t need the help, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Winona Ryder and Sarah Jessica Parker.)

After a weekend of frolicking with the French, Longo hosted a grand fete Tuesday at the House of Bagatelle, which, with its four outdoor and three indoor pools, Turkish baths, saunas and views of Cannes and the Mediterranean Sea from every room, was anything but a trifle.

The invitation list had all the ingredients a party on the French Riviera needs:

One Bush model: Lauren, with mom, Sharon.

One pop singer: Ricky Martin;.

One table-dancing hotel heiress: Nicky Hilton;.

One activist and singer: Bono;.

One French hunk: Gerard Depardieu (who emceed in French and English).

One French diva: Catherine Deneuve.

And three supermodels: Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Heidi Klum.

“Celebrities, they’re all my friends,” said Longo, reached on his cell phone in Nice. “I know all the models and all the actresses.” He was a little hoarse after “two days of going at it.”

“It was very cazh,” he said of Tuesday’s party, meaning casual, “but also elegant. Very chill.

“Even though it was Europeans, French and Americans coming together, somehow we all connected. It was beautiful,” said Longo, an Australian. (In the transnational spirit, Martin and Patti LaBelle sang a little French ditty.)

Even for someone who had taken the Bushes, mere et fille, to Venice just a couple of days before, the party was a little overwhelming. “I just kept pinching myself,” Longo said.

Quote/unquote:

“It was a very ‘Me-me-me’ universe. Not thinking before I spoke, before I acted ... I was going through life robotically, even though I thought I was a ... rebel, outside-of-it-all person. I was still a sheep in many ways ... My life was very small picture.”--Madonna on life before husband Guy and motherhood in Vanity Fair’s October issue.