She may be only backburner material for daytime’s “All My Children,” but at a recent New York film premiere, actress Ingrid Rogers was front and center.
Certainly some of the hoopla surrounding Rogers can be attributed to the company she keeps. In only her second-ever professional acting job, Rogers landed a role opposite Al Pacino and Sean Penn in director Brian de Palma’s “Carlito’s Way,” which opened nationwide last weekend.
If she’s starstruck, the 24-year-old Rogers does her best to play it down.
“I wasn’t `Oh, my God,’ jumping all over the place,” she says. “I think the whole experience was a challenge to look at it without losing my cool. I had to work with these people every day. I simply had to get over every media image I had created around (Pacino and Penn) and see them as fellow actors and do the work,” she says, putting her best professional foot forward.
Wasn’t it even just a little unnerving to find herself headlong into a multimillion-dollar movie with Pacino, Penn, Penelope Ann Miller and John Leguizamo?
“Well, sure, yeah,” Rogers acknowledges. “They were some very strong energies and presences to be around. And Brian’s a very off-the-wall director. This was something I could not imagine. On the outside I seemed calm and cool. On the inside I was more shaken.”
Rogers was sent to do a reading for the role of a barmaid by her agent. She read for the casting agent first.
“By the time they called me in to meet Brian de Palma,” she remembers, “I had so much anxiety, I was so out of it, it didn’t matter. The stakes were so much higher than I was used to that I was almost numb from the magnitude of it.”
Based on that meeting and without a screen test, she won the role.
“I was probably one of the last people to be seen. Truly, I didn’t think I was right for (the project) just because I was so new. I waited a month to hear back. It took so long, it was almost anti-climactic,” she says matter-of-factly.
Rogers was born in Toronto and raised in Jamaica during her teenage years. In college she majored in business at the University of Toronto before switching to acting at New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Her professional debut came in May 1992 when she was cast as yuppie Taylor on “AMC.”
With 18 months remaining on her “AMC” contract, Rogers plans to stick it out as Taylor. But after that, it’s likely she will move on-for reasons only partly due to the actress’ movie aspirations.
“I’m not a permanent fixture here,” says Rogers from the “AMC” offices in New York. “For some characters, the producers buy the furniture for their scenes. For our characters (Taylor’s immediate family), the furniture is rented.”
She pauses. “I don’t know what that means.”
Rogers, who is black, continues: “It’s very frustrating. With black story lines, `All My Children’ has made great strides, but after they stick their foot out, they pull it right back. For me to stay, there would have to be a total restructuring of daytime.
“I’ve decided I’m just going to do my time here. I decided not to expend the energy to fight the system and the people who have been doing things the same way for 20 years.”
And movies? Well, they do enter into the equation.
“My own desire is that I’ll be able to work again in film. I have to keep pushing and capitalize on this movie,” Rogers says. “I don’t want too many disappointments after so many expectations have been raised.
“But,” she concludes, “with this experience I feel much more confident, so it won’t be because of a lack of confidence anymore that I feel challenged.”
– Kin Shriner, actor extraordinaire on “General Hospital,” will last be seen as Scotty Baldwin Dec. 22 in a dramatic exit that involves a kidnapping. Shriner, the quirky cornerstone of the show, chose to leave the soap, he explains, because of a lame “me playing Mr. Mom” story line.
“Being dictated to by six people who don’t know the character and who want you to stick completely to the script cuts off your creativity. Before you know it, it’s like a bad `Love, American Style’ skit,” explains Shriner, who has been on the soap for 15 years.
The actor heads to Toronto to begin taping 151 episodes of a Canadian soap opera, “Family Passion,” a saga of the backstabbing automobile industry from the producers of “Rituals.” In it, Shriner stars as industrialist Mickey Langer. The show is being shopped to USA cable and the networks.
– She’s the Martin Scorsese of daytime drama and, Saturday night, Agnes Nixon gets inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. The creator of “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and co-creator of “Loving” and “As the World Turns,” Nixon’s vision has left a lasting impact in the consciousness of millions of daytime viewers.
Susan Lucci, whose Erica Kane Nixon introduced into mainstream pop culture, will be on hand to present the award in Orlando. The entire ceremony, which includes inductees Bob Newhart and Phil Donahue among others, can be seen at 8 p.m. Dec. 12 on the Disney Channel.
– Serial Man: CBS executive Jeff Sagansky might be the next great champion of the serial format. While his “Angel Falls” prime-time soap (in the “Knots Landing” time slot Thursdays on CBS) was canceled, Sagansky is the guy behind another continuing drama: “Second Chances,” which premieres Dec. 2. Starring Connie Sellecca, Matt Salinger, Ronnie Cox and “Knots’ ” Michelle Phillips, it premieres at 8 p.m. with a two-hour episode, and the series will be followed by at least five more shows airing at 9 p.m.
Sagansky was also the man who did a nifty crossover with actor Joe Lando (Sully on “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”) onto “Guiding Light” this summer during the actor’s hiatus from prime time.
– Back in the saddle again. She plays a doctor on TV, but actress Leslie Charleson, Monica on “General Hospital,” is also an equestrian and will be the celebrity countess in the televised Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Nov. 25.
– Soap fans have until Sunday to bid on one-of-a-kind Christmas ornaments signed by the casts of “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.” “Y&R’s” white glass ball has the John Hanco*cks of Eric Braeden, Lauralee Bell and Heather Tom, among others, and “B&B’s” bauble includes the autographs of Hunter Tylo, Kimberlin Brown and Ron Moss. The ornaments are on display at Lord & Taylor, Old Orchard, 2nd floor. Proceeds benefit the Junior Leagues of Chicago and Evanston-North Shore.
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