Life is Beautiful: Arianne Zuker
Arianne Zuker sits down in her dressing room for this interview and immediately places a magazine in her lap. Seems her wardrobe for the day — a skirt so short it could be a belt — is only made for standing up. (“I am shocked sometimes by the way Nicole dresses,” she laughs.) After nearly four years in Salem, playing Nicole is the perfect fit for the leggy blonde, who admits that her future on the show wasn’t always all sewn up. “For a year-and-a-half, I was a little lost,” Zuker recalls. “Nicole wasn’t a Horton — she wasn’t anything. So, that was tough because you’re just not sure what to do. I was scared out of my mind.” The transformation from mundane model to bitch on wheels was a welcome change for the actress. “Once Nicole became an alcoholic, I knew I had to go with it because I wanted to become something,” she says. “It was a fabulous opportunity. Thank God they gave me the chance. I’m comfortable in Nicole’s skin now.”Working with able soap vets John Aniston (Victor) and Lauren Koslow (Kate) also helped the actress find her way. “When I began working with John, I started to be more confident,” she observes. “Lauren helped a lot, too. They’ve been doing this for a while. It made me have to buck up and learn a little bit, and make sure I’m ‘on’ all the time. I really started to feel like I have something.”
That feeling of security prompted Zuker to re-sign with the show when her contract came up early this year. “My character just started to get cooking,” she explains. “So, if I left, I’d be feeling empty. I was looking forward to staying, actually.”Once her professional life was on-track, Zuker focused on her personal one. In 1998, the actress began dating Michael Dietz (ex-Mark, BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL; ex-Joe, PORT CHARLES; ex-Alan-Michael, GUIDING LIGHT), whom she met at a personal appearance. That fall, they got engaged. Their wedding was scheduled for October, 1999, but it was postponed. Two months later, the romance was over. Though Zuker prefers not to discuss the details of the relationship or why it ended, she says she gained a lot of insight from the experience. “I learned to choose and do things that I want — to be where I want to be,” she reflects. “And be a healthy selfish, if that makes sense, instead of trying to do things that somebody else wants. That is a huge lesson that I’ll still be learning for a long time.”
Zuker also saw firsthand the pitfalls of dating an actor. “Being that I was with someone who’s also a soap star, I understand that things get out in the press,” she says. “That’s okay and it’s normal — because this is the job I chose, and that’s just what’s going to happen. It was my first [relationship with another actor] and I thought, ‘I never want to date someone else in this business.’ But you can’t help that a lot of times. So, now you learn how to put yourself in a better situation … a position where you make smart choices. I took many positive things from [the relationship], rather than finding all the negatives. It was a very important learning process for me, regardless of the publicity.”
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