GH Exclusive: Finola Hughes On Celebrating 40 Years As Anna: ‘It’s Really Gratifying’

If you’re having a hard time believing that April 10, 2025 marks 40 years since Finola Hughes made her General Hospital debut as Anna Devane, just imagine how she feels. “It’s literally crazy,” Hughes marvels. “Forty years since you saw the whites of my eyes the very first time?! Wow.” For the British actress, who wrapped her first GH run in 1992 and made multiple short-term visits before returning full-time in 2012, her GH anniversary also coincides with her move to the U.S. “It’s 40 years in America, so that’s part of the celebration. I’ve been back and forth [from the show], but the character has always been a mainstay of mine, and somewhere I’ve always found parts of myself,” she says. “I love playing Anna, I really do.”

History In The Making

The very first scene Hughes shot as Anna was with a day player (“it’s a scene where I’m seeing a jewelry fence”), but her first time working opposite Tristan Rogers (Robert) was one she’ll never forget. “Legendarily, as he walked away from set, he turned to me, put his arm around me and said, ‘We’re gonna have fun, kid!’ It was like straight out of a Western!” Another backstage encounter during her earliest Port Charles days is likewise forever imprinted on Hughes. She recalls, “It was probably the next morning that John Reilly [ex-Sean Donely, who passed away in 2021] came over to me and gave me this huge, big bear hug. He said, ‘Anytime you need anything, you can just call on me, you can just ask. We’re a family, and you’re part of the family now.’ He was wearing his leather jacket and he had a little mug of coffee in his hands, and in that moment, I honestly felt that it was so genuine. It was him saying, ‘Whatever it is you need, we’ve got your back.’ And boy, did he ever.”

Reilly became an important mentor to Hughes as the then-inexperienced actress adjusted to the demanding world of daytime TV. “He was just somebody I could turn to, that I could talk about anything with,” she smiles. “Especially breaking down scenes. He was a master at it, and  I spent hours rehearsing with him and Tristan. John really taught me how in-depth he went into a script. I would just sit in his [dressing] room and we’d start breaking down dialogue. He was a really good sort of uncle figure for me there, and really, really kind and genuine and funny. I would say that he was my first touchstone there, someone that I could trust and talk to.”

Welcome To The Neighborhood: Tristan Rogers (Robert, l.) and John Reilly (Sean) made strong first impressions on Hughes.

The actress also received a warm reception from a co-star who would also become a dear friend. “Kristina [Wagner, Felicia] is the other person who really welcomed me to the show,” Hughes says. “I was in the makeup room and she came up behind me in her inimitable style, and she tapped me on the shoulder and I was like, ‘Oh, hi!’ She was grinning — she has not changed a bit — and she said, ‘I just wanted to say it’s really good that you’re on the show.’ I was like, ‘Oh, thank you,’ and she just sort of ran off and that was it. But it was adorable, and of course, we worked together quite a bit back then. It was Frisco and Felicia and me and Tristan, and then little Kimberly [McCullough, who played Anna and Robert’s daughter, Robin] came along not long after that. And that was the beginning of a whole new era.”

A Star Is Born

Even in a GH decade rich with breakout stars, Hughes became a fan favorite, despite coming to the show with little on-screen theatrical experience. What she did have was many years of prestigious training and performance as a dancer, alongside which she had dabbled in acting. “I went to a school and then a college of performing arts, so from the age of 10, I was acting — I would get different jobs and I would go off and do a little TV series or whatever — but I never took it seriously,” she explains. “Dance was what I really had an affinity for. When it came time for me to transfer up to the college, they asked me if I would go into the acting side. And in my mind, I was like, ‘No! I have to do dance now, while I’m 16 or 17,’ whatever age that I was. So I went and did that. But I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t always loved acting. I just didn’t concentrate on it. My mind was just on dance.”

Of course, acting and dancing do require many of the same skills of artistic expression, something Hughes realized when she was cast as Victoria the White Cat in the original London production of the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats. “Trevor Nunn, who was the head of the Shakespeare Company, came over to do Cats and when he started to direct to us and talk to us, my ears — not my cat ears, my real ears [laughs] — really perked up,” she reports. “I was like, ‘I really get what he’s saying,’ because when I danced, I kind of acted as well. And when I was in a ballet company, they were like, ‘Man, this is a little bit much. Can you just dance?’ But once I started to grow up, I started to think, ‘Maybe this is something I could do, and maybe I should.’ ”

Fortunately for GH fans, she didn’t let her first big foray into acting discourage her too much. Early in her career, “I did a movie in England that was full of Royal Shakespeare Company actors and I was way out of my league. That was a learning curve! I was like, ‘Kill me now.’ They would sit around the table and talk about their characters’ diaries. I was like,  ‘I’m supposed to have a diary?!’ ”

Hughes found the U.S. to be a gentler location for a novice actor. “It was an easier place for me to learn, let’s put it that way,” she chuckles. Learn she did, and in 1991, six years into her stint at GH, she picked up a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress for her work as Anna, beating out veteran heavyweights Julia Barr (All My Children‘s Brooke), Jeanne Cooper (Katherine, Young and Restless), Elizabeth Hubbard (Lucinda, As the World Turns) and Susan Lucci (Erica, AMC). “That was amazing,” she says of the win. “I was just floored. I don’t think you ever expect these things, but I was young and I really didn’t expect anything like that. It was really cool.”

Back To The Future

Later that same year, Hughes exited the show, with her final scenes airing in January 1992. Asked if she felt a push/pull over leaving, she nods, “Of course I did. I was doing another show for ABC [Jack’s Place, co-starring Hal Linden] and I don’t think they wanted to have me play both roles, so it was just easier for me to leave. What I should have done,” she adds, “is probably gone back sooner.” Wendy Riche, who took over as GH’s executive producer shortly after Hughes left, did try to lure her back, but at the time, Hughes says, “I was just finding other things that interested me. It’s not that General Hospital didn’t, it’s not that the character stopped interesting me or that the people I worked with did — I would have gone back in a heartbeat just to work with them. But there was a part of me that was like, ‘Oh, what would doing a sitcom be like?’ ‘Oh, what would that be like?’ I think I needed to just play around a little bit.”

Though she did make some Anna visits (briefly in 1995, then for longer stints at various points in the 2000s) and reprised the character on AMC from 2001-03, she didn’t come back for good until 2012. “That was Frank [Valentini, executive producer],” she says fondly. “He was the one that was like, ‘Let’s get this party started!’ ”

For the record, she says that she is “100 percent” thrilled, 13 years later, that she opted to slip back into Anna’s skin on a more permanent basis. “It’s really gratifying to be able to do this work and still have people appreciate it,” Hughes declares. And though she’s not quite comfortable taking full credit for creating one of the show’s most iconic characters, she winks, “Let’s say I slipped into her skin. It was there — they drew the outline, and it was a perfect fit, I think. I feel like I steward Anna, in a way.”

Even after all these years, she counts herself among the legions of Anna fans. “I love playing a bad-ass,” she says. “A bad-ass whose heart, hopefully, is in the right place.” (To see a new photo gallery of Anna’s life and escapades, click here.)

 

Bonded For Life: Hughes in 2021 with longtime friend and co-star Kristina Wagner (Felicia)