Adrienne Frantz, who played scandal-prone Ambrosia “Amber” Moore on both B&B and Y&R, has packed in a lot during the last 10 years. She kicked off the decade by tying the knot with soap alum Scott Bailey (ex-Sandy, GUIDING LIGHT) — who she refers to as her “soul mate” — in a mountain-top wedding. “We were friends for five years before we got together, so he knew exactly what he was getting into,” she chuckles. “After we kissed for the first time, we were engaged a couple of months later. It was just meant to be.”
Though the marriage was going along swimmingly, the couple was dealt some devastating blows when Frantz miscarried twice. “Each time was so heartbreaking,” she sighs. “We wanted to have kids so badly but started to think it wasn’t in the cards.” Things took a turn for the better after fertility treatments and surgeries, and Frantz and Bailey welcomed a girl on December 1, 2015. “I named her Amélie because I loved the movie [of the same title] and I thought the name was so beautiful,” she shares. “Being a mom is the best job by far and I tend to go overboard. I cut my daughter’s daily peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with cookie cutters so she has a different shape to eat every day.”
A son, Lion, arrived almost four years later. “When Scott and I first started dating, he would say, ‘I love you so much, I would do anything for you, I would buy anything for you,’ and my response was, ‘I’ll have a lion,’ because I always liked lions,” Frantz explains. “So we decided, ‘If we have a boy one day, we’ll name him Lion.’ ” However, mother and son had to stay in the hospital following his birth. “After Lion was born, he stopped breathing,” Frantz relays. “His diagnosis was that he didn’t transition well and I still don’t know what that means. After a few days, he was able to go home.”
Frantz, on the other hand, was in crisis. “I wasn’t feeling well at all and the doctor basically ignored me,” she remembers. “Finally, after four days of being in extreme pain, I begged him to do something, so they did some sort of scan and found a bowel obstruction. I had to have emergency surgery and my kidneys had already shut down, plus other organs were shutting down as well. I went into congestive heart failure and I spent 10 days in ICU. I remember lying in the hospital room and thinking, ‘I’m never going to see my kids again.’ I knew if I fell asleep that night, I would never wake up. So in the middle of the night I called my best friend, Marissa Tait [ex-Becky, B&B], who lives in New York, and I told her she needed to be on the phone with me so I wouldn’t fall asleep, and she was, for the rest of the night. I finally started to feel better and I’m lucky to be alive. It took a while for me to recover from all of that but I’m better now.”
Frantz and her husband weren’t planning on family expansion, but months after Lion’s birth, the couple happily discovered she was pregnant again. “I’m 43 years old and I thought I was premenopausal,” she says. “I also just had my first vaccine and it knocked my whole body off, so I thought my symptoms were from the shot. I never knew I was pregnant. I didn’t find out until I was a couple of months along. We’re thrilled and we’ve already named him Killian Lachlan Bailey. A nice Irish name. Lachlan was my great-great-grandfather’s name and I just liked Killian. I’m scheduled to have him on March 2 unless he decides to come earlier. I’m just hoping this delivery goes smoothly because I had so much trouble after the last pregnancy.”
Frantz is already calling Killian her “miracle baby. I feel like he’s already healed me because I went from needing a heart valve replacement to that condition being severe to moderate to mild.”
With her home life in full swing, Frantz is putting a full-time return to acting on hold until her third child is a little older. “Scott and I appeared on [DAYS OF OUR LIVES:] BEYOND SALEM together [as Miles and Sophie Faversham],” she notes. “The cast was great and we got to play really weird, fun characters. It was an opportunity for us to do something together. We were actually supposed to do a movie together in Florida but the pandemic happened. I do have some projects in the works, and who knows, maybe I’ll come back to B&B one day.”
For now, the Bailey family is awaiting Killian’s arrival. “I’m very blessed and I have everything I want,” Frantz smiles. “When all of my friends were buying Birkin bags, I bought my first house at 20. I used to have big, crazy parties with a couple of bars set up and a DJ, and 500 people would show up. Everything is much different now. It’s a family home. In fact, my recording studio is now a playroom, which is nice because it’s soundproof [laughs].”
Spelling Check
Before Frantz landed her career-defining role as Amber, she was hired in 1997 to play Tiffany on SUNSET BEACH, a then-new soap by prolific TV producer Aaron Spelling. “It was amazing that I got the job and I was so excited,” she recalls. “It was supposed to be Aaron Spelling’s next huge show. I loved the cast but it became not such a happy place for me.”
Frantz asserts that Spelling tried to exert influence over her personal life. “At one point, I was dating Brian Austin Green [ex-David, BEVERLY HILLS, 90210] and apparently Aaron didn’t want us dating,” she explains. “Brian and I were in a limo with [Spelling kids] Randy [ex-Sean, BEACH] and Tori [ex-Donna, BH 90210] and we were going to an awards show. I was super-nervous about walking the red carpet and then Aaron called Brian and said we weren’t allowed to walk the red carpet together. Randy walked with me. It just was a nightmare situation for me.”
When her BEACH run ended, “A couple of weeks later, I started on BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL,” Frantz recalls. “At one point in time, [Co-Creator] Bill Bell told me he knew what happened [with Spelling] and that’s one of the reasons he wanted me for his show.”
Just The Facts
Birthday: June 7
Born In: Mount Clemens, MI
Soap Start: “My first TV job was on ALL MY CHILDREN. I did a couple of episodes with Kelly Ripa [ex-Hayley].”
Amber’s Arc: Frantz originated the role of B&B’s Amber in 1997 and left in 2005, then popped up as the same character on Y&R in 2006 and stayed until 2010, when she returned to B&B. Amber left town in 2012 but showed up on Y&R again in 2013 for Katherine’s memorial service.
Relationship Status: Married to Scott Bailey (ex-Sandy, GUIDING LIGHT) since November 11, 2011. “I thought getting married on 11/11/11 would be pretty lucky.”
Tax Dividends: The Baileys have two children, daughter Amélie, 6, and son Lion, 18 months. A third baby, a boy, is due in March.
Red Alert: “I have fire engine red hair. Every few years I need to change and I was tired of being blonde, so I decided to spice it up.”
Planning Ahead: “While everything was shut down by the pandemic, Scott got a degree and his
masters in accounting.”
