Windsor Star
May 20, 2000
She's Got No Time For Envy

Those eyes, those lips.

Catherine Hickland, who plays Lindsay Rappaport on One Life to Live, says they are her best features and her worst.

She reckons that her eyes are her best feature but her lips are too thin. "I had my lips injected with collagen years ago," she recalls. "I looked like a platypus. It was a nightmare- I didn't leave the house for weeks."

And while we're speaking of animal life, Hickland has six cats and a dog. Not surprisingly, if she weren't an actor, she would be a veterinarian.

Born in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, she was raised in Hollywood, where Johnny Weissmuller taught her to swim and Burl Ives used to sing folk songs to her.

Though she has animals in multiple, hers is a two-soap household. She is married to Michael E. Knight, who plays Tad on All My Children. But it works. Hickland contends there is no professional jealousy in the marriage. That she had no qualms about Knight working while she didn't have a steady gig. Before OLTL, she appeared on Texas as Courtney Marshall and played Tess Wilder on the City until it was cancelled in 1997.

"I don't have a competitive, envious bone in my body," she insists. "I mean, except with myself. I'm very grateful that God made me that way. I am just am this way. And that's why I don't have a lot of actress friends. I don't want to compete with my friends, let alone my husband. "I think it's absolutely tragic. I feel pathetically sorry for people who are always envious because it's like, how can you have any joy in this life if you're constantly competing with people? So, no I didn't feel at all like that. "When he's happy, I'm happy. And when I'm happy, he's happy."

After The City was demolished, Hickland fired her agent and didn't get another one for seven months. She was burned out at the breakneck shooting schedule.

"At The City, we shot a lot of the week's shows on one set, so there would often be times that I would shoot 15, 18, and as much as 20 scenes a day. And I hated it, because I didn't feel like I could ever do any quality work when under that much pressure and have that many pages."

As much as she might have grown to hate The City, she's been a fan of OLTL, which she has been watching since 1980. "I love the show and have stuck with it even through its horrific moments. There have been times I had to turn it off, but I always came back and I've been loyal."

So when she was approached to do a one-off appearance as Lindsay, Sam's former wife, she jumped at it. "I just tried to make her somebody who you would want to see again and that you wanted to know more about," Hickland explains. It worked. Lindsay made her mark in Llanview. "I am so happy to be a part of this show," she enthuses, "and mainly because I get to work with Erika Slezak (Viki), who is completely and totally amazing. "Kale Browne (Sam) I respect enormously as an actor and he's also a close friend, so I feel super safe with him. "Hillary Smith (Nora)-- oh, my God, you know what I say when I'm working with her and Robert Woods (Bo)? I say 'God, I feel like a fan that won a contest to be in Llanview.'"