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Vibrant Hughes
Finola Hughes' true colors of grace
and class shine through her celebrity mystique
by Robert Schork, SOW 12/28/99
"It takes nothing
short of a celestial body to be visible amid a constellation of stars. When Finola Hughes
sauntered into the Bear Ballroom of New York's Russian Tea Room for Soap Opera Weekly's
10th anniversary party last month, the illuminating All My Children actress
turned heads, raced pulses, sweated palms and warmed hearts all in one fell swoop. By
night's end, Hughes left a sea of charmed and delighted admirers in her wake- and gave the
RTR's headline-grabbing $32 million face-lift a run for its money as the evening's prime
distraction.
One might assume that the allure of such rarified air would cause the celebity in question to keep everyone at arm's length- thereby perpetuating the franchise of her mystique. But Hughes fiercely refuses to stand on the ceremony of her own celebrity. Refreshingly, she breaks down the walls that often exist between actress and fan, actress and journalist, or even actress and John Q. Public with a vengence- as if she feared suffocation or claustrophobia from the alternative. Case in point: on her offical web site (www.friendsoffinola.simplenet.com), Hughes thoughtfully pens a monthly journal, in which she directly shares with her fans the day-to-day goings on in her life- from her recent surprise birthday party to a weekend jaunt with her husband to the Bershires to catch the fall foliage.
Possessing a deliciously audacious savoire faire, Hughes never ceases to allow her true colors of grace and class to shine through. At the party, she took it upon herself to scout out and move extra chairs for guests (many of whom she barely knew) standing with hands full of glasses and plates, so that they could have a place to sit at her table, and enjoy their dinner sitting down.
Similarly, during lunch for this interview at New York's Gramcery Tavern, Hughes insisted her interviewer sampler her choice oof entree- skate- and even wen so far as to give an animated demonstration of what a skate is to a reporter embarrassed by his own ignorance- replete with hand gestures and mouth expressions imitating the fish's life before it ended up on her plate. 'Perhaps I should be acting out my lunch,' Hughes says in her perfect British diction, before covering a hearty laugh and a wide smile with her hand.
In a craft besmirching by the stereotype of its purveyors being long on ego and short on artistry, Hughes is refreshingly blessed with an absence of the former and an abundance of the latter. For this, she credits her upbringing on the other side of the pond. 'I think I was blessed with great parents, for the amount of time I had with them. And a great brother and a fabulous husband.' Hughes takes a beat. 'I like people. It's not a mystery to me. Just about all my father's side of the family are doctors, nurses, and my brother is a doctor. My mother was a nurse, though my father wasn't a doctor- he drove a cab in London.' Having so many relatives committed to a caring profession helped instill in Hughes a heaping dose of humanity, while her creative aspirations may have stemmed from her mother's other vocation. 'My mother taught opera, and instilled that. It was a great thing. We grew up in the city, my father was Irish. They are great storytellers, and they had this huge Irish band, and that has been the big thing in my life: Irish fun, craziness, storytelling and literature.' Hughes grew up in a part of London 'that actually is now famous- Notting Hill. It was pretty bubbly, public and crazy. I don't think anything about me is considered traditional, really, It was very Bohemian growing up. I missed a lot of education. I learned how to add, but I don't do very well in math, at all. I think any math helps you to problem solve, doesn't it? And I can't problem solve. I stare at these problems in front of me and I don't know how to get to the bottom of them. I had lunch with Kimberly (McCullough, ex-Robin Scorpio, General Hospital) about two weeks ago. And she is really good at calculus and geometry. She was trying to teach me some things, saying, "This is how you solve the problem. This is what it means." And it was going over my head. I literally don't get it. It's a lost cause,' she says with a laugh. While a math and science career might not have been in the cards for Hughes, one in the arts certainly was: Hughes' dedication to the study of ballet from the age of 10 through 17 paid off, as she made her first public appearance at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden at age 11. In 1980, all of her ballet training came to fruition when she originated, and portrayed for one year, the role of Victoria, the White Cat, in the London-based original company of Cats. Andrew Lloyd Webber interviewed each member of the original cast and incorporated bits of their personalities into their characters, thus leaving a bit of Hughes in every subsequent Victoria.
Her work in Cats and other roles that followed caught the eye of Sylvester Stallone, who cast her in her first American movie, Stayin' Alive- opposite John Travolta, and directed by Stallone. The role was a turning point for Hughes, who had wanted to bring her blossoming acting career stateside. 'I was so excited when I came here to stay; that was when I decided I had to live here. As soon as I landed, I mean literally, I landed and I knew- I was driving through L.A. and I was like, "Oh, this is it. This is the place." It was almost as if I had been dreaming about it. Then it was just a question of going back to England and packing, it was that fast. I came to New York with a hat, three suitcases and about 400 pounds in my pocket. That was it. I figured for a year, that would do me,' she says with a laugh. 'I just thought it would be like being in a Starsky and Hutch episode.'
The actress got her wish to put down professional and personal roots in America when she landed the role of GH's Anna Devane in 1985. When GH executive producer Gloria Monty first cast Hughes in the part of Robert Scorpio's cagey ex-wife, she had little familiarity with the American brand of soap. 'At the time in England, the soaps weren't on every day- just three times a week in the evening or late afternoon. So I had no idea that it was such a day-to-day industry. But when I first started watching GH, when I knew I was going to be on it, I saw how intimate it was- and exciting. To be able to get in there and get so involved as an actress in your character... and the audience gets equally involved with the character, as well.' Hughes admits she had no idea what she was getting herself into when she signed on the dotted line. 'Ignorance is a great leveler. It is really only in retrospect, that I'm able to look back and realize that I had no idea. I was just doing it. I would come in, get my makeup on and do the scene. We were working with Gloria, which was insane. She is an amazing producer. She really made up cut cake. She was tough. We were there all day, every day. So long.' But Hughes held her own and lived up to Monty's notoriously perfectionist standards, and, in doing so, quietly parlayed what could have very easily been a short-term supporting role into one of GH's- if not the genre's- most popular leading characters. To accommodate her rising popularity, the show morphed Anna from a villainous, ax-grinding ex ('I used to get terrible mail') into the show's romantically tortured action-adventure heroine.
While many of her crime-busting GH co-stars came and went (and came back again), Hughes remained on GH for seven consecutive years, forming a tentpole around which a wildly popular nucleus of action-adventure characters was cultivated. Most notable among them was Anna's love interest, mobster Duke Lavery, played by Ian Buchanan. Though Buchanan left the show after a three-year run, that was enough time to cement a lasting best-friendship between him and Hughes, one that continues to this day (this past month, Buchanan flew to New York to be the surprise guest at Hughes' surprise birthday party, all arranged by her husband.)
As Hughes led the charage, she and her co-stars played out the show's trademark cloak-and-dagger storylines with aplomb. '[The storylines] were so detailed, which was what made it fly,' Hughes recalls. 'Because when you have that many details, you can just fly with the story. And it was much looser. I don't ever remember sticking to the script; a lot of it was improvisation in those days. And if the scenes didn't work, Gloria would come on the set and change it. Tristan (Rogers, ex-Robert Scorpio) was great at that, and when they brought Kimberly in, her audition was all improvisation. She improvised with the two of us a lot.' One story that Hughes couldnt' just wing with improv was the alien storyline from 1990, which caped a decade of increasingly off-the-wall adventures from her character. But Hughes rose to the challenge, taking the potentially ridiculous and making it sublime. 'I have a very good friend who is an acting coach in L.A. and I do remember getting those scripts, and I went to him one evening. I threw the scripts down on the floor and I screamed, "What do I do? How do I make this work?" We sat up all night looking at this stuff and saying, "Ok, we are finding the humor and true life in all of it. What would you do if you were confronted with somebody who said they were an alien and they didn't know anything about sex? How do you talk about that?" For her efforts, Hughes was awarded both the Daytime Emmy and the Soap Opera Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in 1991.
Unfortunately, she wasn't able to claim the gold in person. 'I had to fly back to London to stay in the country to get my green card. So I got my green card and my Emmy on the same day, only in different countries! It was a big day. Even if I wasn't there to get it, it was still wonderful, a wonderful moment. And it's what happens when you take risks with stories.'
This past summer, Hughes signed on to take another big risk with ABC Daytime, when she agreed to play the mysterious Alexandra Devane on AMC. From the outset, the unknown connection between Alexandra and Anna Devane was a major selling point for the character- one ABC has taken full advantage of . For her part, Hughes has skillfully walked the Alex/Anna tightrope in her acting choices. 'What I have done is lay bread crumbs very, very gently. Like the relationship with Gillian. Because she is a girl that would be the same age as my own daughter,' says Hughes, speaking in character as Anna. 'And if I had been separated from my own daughter for that amount of time, I would naturally bond to a young woman who reminds me of my own daughter.'
While Alex has settled into Pine Valley, Hughes and her husband Russell Young, have settled into a New York state of mind. 'I know the first couple of days when I got here, I said, "New York eat me, I didn't win." But that quickly turned around for the couple, who live in downtown Manhatten. 'New York is such an adult city. It's like "Get on with it." You have to figure everything out yourself. The subways and how to get everywhere.' After mastering the subways with Metrocard in hand, Hughes has fully embraced New York, and all it has to offer, including late-night parties, opera and other cultural fare, and shopping. 'That's freightening. Don't even talk to me about that! I'm always so close to taking my credit cards out of my purse. My brother got into so much trouble with his credit card, that he put it in a bowl of water, and put it in the ice box, so his credit card was literally frozen. I thought that was genius, I'm thinking of doing this!'
Chatting him up at the anniversary party, it's easy to see why Young, as a down-to-earth multitalented creative type himself (photographer, artist and director), is such a perfect match for Hughes. The couple first met at a party he threw in L.A. Young was instantly attracted to Hughes, but his hopes were dashed when he saw her on Buchanan's arm- until someone informed him they were just pals.
In the short time she's been back on daytime, Hughes has been simply divine- or is that Devane? Whether her character ultimately turns out to be Alex or Anna, Hughes is playing her for all she's worth, and is getting the utmost pleasure and satisfaction from doing so. 'From the get-go, the aim of the writers and producers was to create a very rounded character, regardless of her ultimate identity. And that was very important, or the story wouldn't be able to go anywhere. Everyone has been working very hard at this, from Agnes and her team to Jean (Burke, executive producer), to make Alex a viable character no matter who she is.' Asked if the network's reliance on the Anna angle might backfire if it turns out Alex isn't Anna, leaving viewers feeling cheated as a result, Hughes offers, '(Alex being Anna) is the best story you can have. And that is the best story for the viewer. And ultimately, that would be a great story to tell. Agnes Nixon is a smart lady. And she knows what she ultimately wants. And she also knows wha she wants her show to be. I think she will find a way to tell the best stories from her human aspect, because that is what AMC is basically about. When you look at GH, it is much darker, like the espionage or mob-stuff. So we are finding the best stories to tell. I think the viewers know it, so I hope we never do cheat them.'"
