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I'll Take Manhattan

One gal who makes the most of her time is GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Cynthia Preston (Faith), who became an expert on the Big Apple while on business last year. “I was shooting a movie, The Event, that went to Sundance,” Preston reports. “I shot and then I was supposed to fly out because I was tired. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to go home now.’ Then I thought, ‘What am I doing? I can’t just go home. I’m in New York City!'”Preston bumped her ticket for another two days, extended her room, and made a long list of all she wanted to do. “I went down to the concierge and I said, ‘OK, here’s my list. Help me make a plan,'” she recalls. “In two and a half days, I saw two Broadway shows, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, took a ferry ride, took the subways, went to a nightclub, went to the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art), and then went to Ground Zero. I was in motion the whole time. It was great. My manager was in New York at the time, and she was calling me and saying, ‘I’m so sorry, I hope you’re not sitting in your room doing nothing.’ I’m like, ‘Do you wanna know what I’ve been doing? You wanna see a place? Come with me. I find ways.'”Preston also finds ways to make friends everywhere she goes. “I talked to people on the subway, and this little Puerto Rican man came to the nightclub with me. I bet he never would have gone to this club. I went home and put on black clothes and lots of makeup, and at the time, I had this wacko hairdo. It would be the only time in my life I had a platinum blond spiked punk cut with a fuchsia mullet. I had fake piercings and fake tattoos for this movie and this character. “Sounds like quite a different role than she normally plays, chic-and-sleek mobster’s moll Faith Rosco. “It’s just a supporting part,” Preston says, modestly. “There’s the guy who runs the AIDS hospice, and I’m his right-hand woman. I’m very, very, very efficient. But it was the best script I’ve ever read. I was trying to get on it for five months. I said, ‘Please let me be involved in any way I can.’ It’s about a guy who’s dying of AIDS and he chooses when he wants to go instead of just letting it kill him. All of his friends are interrogated by Parker Posey (ex-Tess, AS THE WORLD TURNS), who plays the DA, because assisted suicide is, of course, illegal. And everyone says, ‘I did it. No, he’s lying. He didn’t do it. I did it.’ So how is she supposed to prosecute all these people? It’s about finding out how it really went down and who did it. It’s a beautiful script about beautiful people in a heartbreaking situation. I would laugh out loud when I was reading it, and then it makes you a little sad, and then it makes you sob.”Preston was thrilled to see that the audience at Sundance had the same reaction to the movie as she did. “I saw it in an auditorium full of 1300 people, and everybody was laughing in the right places and then you heard the sniffles start, and then it was the sobs. I was trying not to cry because I knew I had to go up for the Q&A after and I didn’t want my eyes swollen. But I couldn’t help it. The reporters were still crying when they asked the director questions, after the Q&A. It’s a beautiful film. I was lucky to be involved.”

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