Jennifer Bassey

Emmy winner Jennifer Bassey—yeah, Marian Colby herself—jumped into “All My Children” as a contract player back in ‘98, but honestly, she’d been making waves as Marian since the early ‘80s. Born in Chicago, her first gig was actually as a singing Playboy bunny (talk about a wild start). She ditched the bunny act and ended up at RADA in London—barely squeaked in, but hey, she graduated with honors, right behind Anthony Hopkins. Not a bad crowd to run with. After London, she hit New York, hopping between Broadway and off-Broadway. She tackled everything from Neil Simon’s “California Suite” to “In Praise of Love” with Rex Harrison, and even the original Royal Shakespeare production of “The Homecoming.” More recently, you could catch her in Molière’s “Tartuffe” and Wendy Wasserstein’s “Isn’t It Romantic” at Tribeca Playhouse. She’s played everything from Katherine in “The Taming of the Shrew” to a pretty fierce Lady Macbeth. When AMC scooped her up in ‘83, they only wanted her for five months, but viewers lost it for Marian Colby—so yeah, twenty years later, she’s still around. She’s done her share of movies, from “Waxwork” to “Twogether” with Nick Cassavetes, and who could forget her orangutan massage in “Dunston Checks In”? TV-wise, she’s popped up on “Law & Order,” “L.A. Law,” “Murphy Brown,” and a bunch more. She scored two Soap Opera Digest Awards (one with David Canary), and in her downtime, she’s busy writing and hanging with longtime partner Luther Davis, the guy behind “Kismet” and “Grand Hotel.”