The Digest on sale July 7 includes an interview celebrating Robin Strasser’s 30th anniversary as ONE LIFE TO LIVE’s Dorian. There are a couple of gaps in the actress’s Llanview résumé, however, including the period when, after contract negotiations with OLTL broke down in 2000, she was wooed to play 300-year-old witch Hecuba on PASSIONS. It was a happy experience, reports Strasser, and not just because of a dressing room “the size of a studio apartment.”
“They had a wardrobe shop where they made my costumes from scratch,” marvels Strasser. “The costume designer was so brilliant and had a budget. There was a person who only did wigs, and she got me one of Bette Midler‘s wigs in that movie where she was the witch [Hocus Pocus] — it was this magnificent thing! I sat down with the makeup artist and I said, ‘Shave off my eyebrows!’ He said, ‘What?!’ I said, ‘You want to make those witch eyebrows … let’s shave them off.’ He was so into it.”
Hecuba wasn’t Strasser’s first time playing a witch … but it had been a while between broomsticks. “These are the parts I played when I was 6 years old,” grins the actress. “If there was a witch or a troll or the wicked stepmother, those were my parts. I know the voices, I know the movements, I love the dress-up. I had a ball — it was a childhood dress-up dream come true for a grown-up!”
Speaking of kids, the daytime vet had some advice for her young PASSIONS co-stars. Recalls Strasser, “I would sometimes say to the kids in the makeup room, ‘Take care of yourself.’ They’d say, ‘What do you mean?’ I’d say, ‘You know, just take care of your health. ‘Cause 20 years down the line, you’re going to be on cable. This is a cult show in the making!'”
