Rested for ‘Restless’

Judith CHAPMAN did something few actors have the courage to do -- leave Hollywood for 14 years. Then she did something even more unexpected: She came back.

Chapman reportedly beat out a bevy of soap opera actresses for the juicy role of Gloria Fisher Abbott, a gold digger who marries a cosmetics tycoon on television’s most-watched daytime drama, “The Young and the Restless.”

Chapman took over the role in January after Joan Van Ark left the series as the brassy Gloria. Chapman still keeps what she calls her “Palm Springs life” separate from her life in Los Angeles. After working on “Y&R;” Monday through Friday, she teaches yoga in Palm Springs and spends time at a desert restaurant, St. James at the Vineyard, with her partner James Offord on the weekends.

In 1988, Chapman started leaving Hollywood on the weekends for the calm of the Coachella Valley. She taught acting at College of the Desert and began directing and acting in local theater as well as mounting a one-woman play, “The Belle of Amherst,” based on the life of Emily Dickinson. In 1991 she sold her L.A. house and moved in with Offord, taking occasional TV roles.

The daughter of a retired U.S. Air Force general, she was born in Greenville, S.C., but spent most of her childhood living around the globe. Her first acting role -- at age 14 -- was in a Spanish shampoo commercial where she made $10, later followed by a spaghetti western also shot in Spain.

Why did you take more than a decade off from Hollywood?

I left in 1991. I was starting to reach that age where roles were getting harder to get, but even more than that, I lost my passion for it. I remember once saying that if acting stops being fun, please give me the good sense to do something else. So I managed an art gallery, taught yoga and helped James [Offord] with the restaurant.

Through teaching, through directing plays, I found my passion again. It was career suicide in some ways, in other ways I was reacquainting myself with what I was put on this earth to do. And it brought me back full circle.

How did you get the role of Gloria when so many other actresses were vying for it?

It just was the right part at the right time. Even with my supposedly having disappeared from the Hollywood scene, I was busy sustaining and working on my craft.

My agents called me, but because no one had seen my work in a while, I had to go back and read for the casting agent. At the last audition, I walked on stage in character and it was one of the things that cinched it for me.

I’ve read that many known actresses over 40 have to audition for roles now. What do you think about that?

Everybody has to audition now -- for the smallest parts, for three lines. That’s one of the reasons I left. I call it groveling for scraps. Unfortunately, that’s what so many actors -- not just women -- are forced to do to just get something.

Now the longer I’m on this show, the more I wake up every morning and go, “Thank you.”

Soap opera viewership has been on a downward slide. What do you think the future of soap operas will be?

It seems that so many soaps seem to try to follow trends and are getting away from what soap operas have always been about: family, love, sex, illegitimate children, divorces and adultery. They have gotten into these strange story lines about bringing people back from the dead and supernatural phenomena, trying to find an audience. That’s why “The Young and the Restless” has stayed so popular, because it’s stayed true to the core.

What do you think of movie stars moving to television, like Glenn Close in “The Shield”?

You just gave me an idea. Because so many A-list actors have moved to prime-time shows, maybe some of them will realize that a lot of the work is actually in daytime. Maybe that’s what will save soap operas and bring on the renaissance.

-- Barbara E. Hernandez