Catching Up With Amy Gibson
As a 13 year-old actress on LOVE OF LIFE, where she played troubled teen Lynn Henderson, Amy Gibson made a troubling discovery with one of the show’s hairstylists. “I put my head [upside down] for the hair guy,” she recounts. “And he said, ‘Ame, you know you have a bald spot.’ I though he was kidding. And then he said, ‘No, I’m serious.'”
“I didn’t know what to think,” Gibson recalls. “The first thing I thought was that I was dying. I thought I had leprosy. I was incredibly emotional.”
After consulting a physician, Gibson learned she did not have leprosy, but was suffering from alopecia areata, a non-scarring, inflammatory, hair-loss disease. “Then I got scared that I was going to be fired, and the makeup guy and the hair guy said they wouldn’t tell anybody,” she confesses.
Gibson later played Alana Anthony on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS before landing the role of GH’s WSB agent Colette Francois. Three weeks before starting on GH, she stopped taking the cortisone shots that had helped her keep some of her hair. Within weeks Gibson went completely bald. “That is when my journey began because prior to that I was able to cover up [my hair loss],” she reflects. “I went to the producer and I said, ‘Why don’t we make her with seven different dialects and several different looks [and wigs] to get her man,’ and they did that and no one ever knew.”
“Over the years, I would end up learning techniques and coming across great [hair] pieces. And everyone kept saying, ‘You know so much about wigs and you’re always recommending [to] us where to go, why don’t you open your own wig company?'” Gibson took that advice and it led to the creation of her company, Crown and Glory Enterprises, which provides wigs and counseling services to women suffering from hair loss.
Gibson also has a book based on her experiences in the works, Your Crown and Glory, and a Los Angeles based radio show, “Heads Up” on KRLA at 11 a.m. on Sundays and available nationwide through www.KRLA870.com. “The format is a bold, female forum where we discuss women’s real needs from hormones to medicine to men. It’s the first show in the country to regularly target feature segments on hair loss for women and the confusing issues associate with it,” she says.
For more on Crown and Glory Enterprises or Heads Up go to www.crownandgloryenterprises.com.
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