Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Jalapeno speaks
By Gustave | Season 1 | Episode 14 | Aired on 03.07.2002
Well, we all had to take dance lessons as part of the curriculum but I'm not a dancer or anything.
I'd have thought you had a dance background. You have a dancer's body.
I can move [laughs] but I'm not really trained. I mean, I love to dance -- like at clubs and stuff -- but I never pursued it as a career or anything.
So after high school, you just started working?
Sort of. I was trained primarily in theater, and when I got out into the real world, I started auditioning right away because I got an agent through my high school. But the auditions were mostly for television and film, so I had to learn television and film acting on my own. And it's a totally different technique. So I didn't work for a while because I didn't know what I was doing. I picked up a lot from the audition process, though, and a year later, I got cast in Lean On Me.
You were on As The World Turns for five years.
I played Bianca Marquez. They have a fictitious Latin American country on the show called Montega.
Fantastic!
So she takes this boat over, because her parents have been killed and she needs to find this man that she used to work for back in Montega. So she works for him for a while, and then she gets adopted by this wealthy woman named Lucinda Walsh.
Ah, so that's how you became Bianca Marquez Walsh!
Exactly. It was kind of a rags-to-riches story with her. But it was great because I was working practically every day. And I met one of my best friends on that set. We're still the best of friends.
And then you were in Cowboy Way with Kiefer. Did you meet him then?
Yeah, I met him then. And then on my first day on 24, I walked up to him and I said, "Um, we've worked together before," and he was like, "Yeah! I knew you looked familiar! I was looking at you and thinking, 'I know her.'" So, yeah, he remembered me from that. I was so psyched.
Aw! Actually, I had thought that maybe you had been cast in 24 because you'd remained friends with Kiefer.
No. It was just a coincidence.
Who are your friends? Like, do you know any famous people? Jeez, could I be any more superficial?
[laughs] I don't know anyone.
Does your agent ever try to get you to schmooze with or date famous people?
I wouldn't work with an agent who told me to do that. [laughs] I'm very much not in the "industry." It's just my job. Do you know what I'm saying? It's not real. What's real to me is life outside of that. And then that's what you bring to the work.