Whether it's getting high on marijuana while filming her first movie, escaping an arranged marriage by tribal leaders in Afghanistan, meeting her co-star-turned-first-love Ryan O'Neal, the contract she signed with their son promising to not date any of his friends, or the tattoo Andy Warhol publicly painted on her thigh, Leigh Taylor-Young is armed with enough stories to fill this entire magazine and then some. Better still, she delivers them with the infectious enthusiasm of a true bon vivant. "I feel like a walking storyteller," agrees Taylor-Young. "If somebody puts a quarter in my mouth and pulls my arm down, I just start talking."

Luckily, this interviewer came armed with a pocketful of quarters. Insert one: How are things at PASSIONS, now that her long-suffering character, Katherine, is finally back in Harmony? "I find myself learning more about the craft I've spent my life doing on this show than I have in many other endeavors," she grins.

That's quite a compliment, coming from the woman who shot to fame on the granddaddy of all soaps, PEYTON PLACE. Taylor-Young was fresh out of college when she signed on for the part of Rachel Welles. "When I hit PEYTON PLACE I worked harder than anybody on the show. I was very, very serious — and surrounded by un-serious, but very charismatic, young actors," including heartthrob O'Neal.

Insert quarter: "He was just 26 years old, very arrogant and cute and flirtatious. I was so serious, I didn't know what the heck he was talking about. He tried unsuccessfully for a number of months to ask me out. He'd call me up and say, 'Hey, do you want to go to a party?' And I'd say, 'I'm sorry, but I have a book that I'm really loving that I want to finish.' And he'd go, 'Excuse me. A book?'" Taylor-Young wasn't being coy — she was dead serious. "I was riveted by a book by one of the world's great French theologians, and I told Ryan very eagerly, thinking perhaps I could talk with him about it. But he just made jokes about boxing. He had no idea what I was talking about.

"So here we were, these two vastly different people," continues Taylor-Young, wistfully. "He finally realized that the way to approach me was to be sweet to me. I was always a sucker for sweetness. I was completely innocent, and succumbed to his massive charms, because I had never experienced anything like it. The whole cast and crew saw what was happening, and they tried to take me aside and warn me that he was a playboy. I had no idea what that was. They saw me as a lamb going to the slaughter. Because once Ryan found the door in, the rest was history. But it was a very worthy experience, because I have the most remarkable son (Patrick O'Neal), and Ryan and I are very, very good friends now."

O'Neal was still married to actress Joanna Moore when Taylor-Young became pregnant by him, but O'Neal and his wife had been living separately for two years. After O'Neal's divorce was finalized, he exchanged vows with Taylor-Young while both were still on PEYTON PLACE. But not everyone was happy with the outcome: Her pregnancy caused studio 20th Century Fox to exercise its "Act of God" clause in her contract and dump her. "They had 30 days after the birth of my son to exercise it. On the 15th day, they dropped me. But on the 16th day, I got [my first film offer], I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, which I never could have done had Fox not dropped me."

The film — starring Peter Sellers about a 30-something square who falls in love with a hippie and decides to "drop out" himself — was definitely a case of casting against type for Taylor-Young. "I had been working so hard during the '60s that I missed much of the hippie influence. I had never said 'groovy' in my life, or worn a short skirt, or smoked anything at all. In fact, I was still wearing little white gloves, stockings and long skirts. I loved classical music, didn't drink or swear, and was still a virgin at 21. Then, all of a sudden, I get a job playing a character smoking grass and baking marijuana brownies."

Time for another quarter: "I was starring opposite Peter Sellers, a comic genius who fell in love with me and complicated my personal life with his attempts to 'deal' with my devotion to Ryan. I smoked my first joint on-camera, having been told it was only oregano. It was the first contemporary movie where smoking joints, making marijuana brownies and getting 'high' was explicitly and very humorously demonstrated. I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! became a cult classic of the '60s and launched my film career."

The movie would pave the way to more natural highs for Taylor-Young, the first of which occurred on the press tour for the film, when she struck up an unlikely friendship with Andy Warhol. "Warner Bros. threw a big cocktail party to introduce me to the press. I was led to meet Andy, who suggested he paint a butterfly on my thigh for the photographers (her character in the movie had a butterfly tattoo on her thigh). Everyone loved it as the photographers flashed away. It was a truly '60s moment with Andy Warhol and the film epitome of the '60s flower child."

PART II>>>