Liza Huber
LIZA HUBER, who plays Gwen on Passions, didn't grow up wanting to become an actor. Nor did she put it aside as probably improbable.
"From the time I was a child," Huber says, "I was encouraged to keep my mind open about what I wanted to do in life and to look around for opportunities everywhere."
Huber - whose mot-her, Susan Lucci, stars as Erica on All My Children and also does prime time and Broadway theatre - says: "Both my mother and my father (producer and businessman Helmut Huber) said the best way to make your choices in life is to learn about them. The more I was introduced to, the more I would know what I liked to do best."
Her friends always assumed she'd never have a problem becoming an actor because of her mother.
"That's not entirely true," Huber says. "The thing about having a famous actress as your mother is that it may help you meet people, but that's it. The rest is up to you. If they open the door for you, you must take the next steps."
Huber agrees that sometimes it's more difficult for the child of a performer to take those steps.
"People expect you to do better than actors who didn't grow up in the business," she says. "But you're still a beginner, and you still have a lot of rough edges."
When Huber was cast as Gwen Hotchkiss on Passions, it surprised many in the soap press. They thought she would make her daytime debut with her mother. But Huber and her mom both felt this was an important time for her to be seen as separate from Lucci and become herself.
A year after she started with the show, she left. Some said she realised that acting was not for her; others said she felt she'd rather concentrate on some other acting medium than soaps. But two years after she left the series, Huber returned.
"I felt I had done the right thing," she said. "I needed to make a decision about acting and about a number of other things, and this was the best way to do it."
Huber believes that Gwen and her longtime rival and nemesis Theresa (Lindsay Hartley) have a long way to go before there's any chance for them to be friends.
"It can happen, but they both need to do a lot of growing up," she says. "And it's going to be a lot of fun watching how they do it. They both have to decide about Ethan."
