Not one to conform to type, Marcil confesses that it her brief time as a professional actress she has had to fight to keep from being stuck in the stereotypical mold her exotic looks tend to suggest. "I'm always cast as the sexpot," she laughs. "So in that respect my looks sometimes hinder me. If you are pretty, sexy or whatever, people always want to typecast you in those roles. They don't want to give you the chance to play something that your looks go against. But isn't that what acting is? It's not being who you are, it's being able to completely become someone else."

Marcil is confident that the multifaceted Brenda will help her overcome these stereotypes, making for a smoother transition into other dramatic roles. Like most dedicated daytime actors, Marcil has definite ideas about her character, and, in fact, had a hand in developing Brenda's background. "When I first came on the show, Crystal Carson (Julia) and I got together and created [the character's] history," she explains, "basically so we could make sense of where the two were coming from. The writers decided to use it. With the disinheritance story (Brenda's dad dropped her from his will, and until recently Julia silently supported her), we wanted to show the depth of how much Julia cares about Brenda; to show that even though her father wasn't there caring for her, Julia was. Eventually I think Brenda will learn to have a relationship with her sister.

"Brenda is a lot of fun to play," she continues. "She has great humor and an edge that makes her unique I've made her a little more vulnerable than (GH) planned. But I think it's really important when you are playing something of a vixen to have areas where people see the character's vulnerability. That way they have the opportunity to care about them a little bit."

Aside from Brenda being young, manipulative and somewhat misunderstood, Marcil views the character as someone searching for love. "That is the one thing she thinks she doesn't have," she explains. "She has her sister, but because of their father Brenda has a lot of resentment toward her. Because of that, she is mad at the world and takes it out in a lot of devious ways. Brenda is not really a true vixen, but more the teen-ager crying out for help."