Q &A with Adrienne Frantz
(Amber Moore, The Bold and the Beautiful)

Critics who maintain that daytime drama is a dying art form need only look at the recent tour de force given by The Bold and the Beautiful's Adrienne Frantz (Amber), who mourned the death of her stillborn child, to know that the medium is alive and well. Now Amber, at her mother's urging, has taken her cousin's newborn and is passing him as the Forrester heir.

When she's not playing Amber, Frantz (who portrayed Tiffany on Sunset Beach prior to joining B&B) makes movies, sings and grants interview requests. The busy actress recently took time out of her schedule to chat with us and share her thoughts on Amber's integrity, TV mom Andrea Evans (Tawny) and keeping a positive outlook in show business.— Michael J. Maloney

You've had some incredibly heavy material lately with the labor and death of Eric III. How much preparation goes into those major scenes?

A lot. It was so devastating. When I work, I use an acting technique called "substitution." I take something that happened in my life and I place it into the scene. I won't say what I used in the scenes involving the baby. I actually never like to share what I use, but I will say that I just sat alone for quite a while on the morning that the scenes were taped. I didn't really talk to anyone. I just sat alone. I had prepared all week up to that point. I felt myself getting closer to being ready and I knew it would happen. I went with it and trusted myself to be completely uninhibited. I used the substitution and I just broke.

It was a true tour-de-force performance, as they say.

Thank you. I really think that Amber giving birth and, later, at the funeral was among the best work that I've ever done in my life. When I did one scene, I said, "No, no, it's not right yet." So they let me try it again. I sat there on the set for five minutes and everyone was great. They were really quiet. There was such grief and utter sadness in Amber. I felt all these crazy emotions. I couldn't stop crying for about ten minutes after the last scene. I just went to my dressing room and sat alone. I had to calm down. When I did those scenes, I was on such a different level. I found what I could do thanks to [head writer and executive producer] Bradley Bell and his amazing writing. He gave me great stuff to work with.

We were all so busy wondering whether Raymond or Rick would be the baby's father, I don't think anyone anticipated the baby dying.

It was so sad because Amber was right the whole time. She knew it was Rick's child. When I read the script, I could not stop crying. I got it about a week in advance and it made me a wreck. I thought, how can I do this? I knew it would be hard enough to play labor.

I'm going to play head writer here for a minute. Remember right after the labor was completed, and the midwife left the room with the baby for a minute and then came back in? If the show ever wanted to rewrite things and say that she switched Eric III with another baby while she was out of the room, there would be a perfect flashback to support that.

Yes. But I think it was more a case of the midwife knowing that something was wrong with the baby and I think that she left because she wanted to see if she could revive him without Amber and Tawny going hysterical. She probably thought it would be easier to work on him if she wasn't around a lot of people. I think that's why she left the room.

You're probably right, but if in five years or whenever, the writers wanted to change things, they certainly could.

[Smiles] You never know.

Andrea [Evans, who plays Tawny] looks and acts like she really could be your mother.

I know. I love Andrea. I think she's amazing. It's funny that the producers cast a mother for me who could totally be my mom in terms of her mannerisms and voice. She actually looks more like my mother than my own mother does. Katherine [Kelly Lang, who plays Brooke], Andrea and I were all doing a scene and we all kind of have high squeaky voices and at one point I was thinking, "Boy, we're probably gonna shatter some windows."

Leading up to the delivery, we got to learn a lot about Amber and her upbringing and why she is the way she is. It's made her very sympathetic to the audience, which is good given Amber's current baby-swap situation.

We learned why Amber never trusted men and what happened in her childhood with her mother bringing all these different men home. I was so happy that the writers delved into Amber's past, so that people could understand where she was coming from. Previously, I was just playing what I thought had gone on in her life.

My mom's a psychiatrist and I've learned that the way people act stems from their past and what happened to them in childhood. I grew up learning all that stuff, and I've taken psychology classes.

It can all be pretty fascinating.

Oh, yeah.

How do you justify Amber passing off another baby as Rick's?

Amber truly wanted nothing to do with that. She lost her baby. She didn't want to take her cousin's. I think that Amber was mentally gone. She's still in another place. She's so grief-stricken she can barely breathe. Tawny really shoved the baby in her face. Amber said that she didn't want to even think about doing it. Her mom is really the one who forced her to do this. Tawny pointed out to Amber how awful her life would be if she didn't go along with it. During the drive back to the Forresters, Amber still didn't want to do it. But once everyone saw the baby, there was no turning back. It's not like Amber ever said, "Oh, great! Now I've got another baby!" Initially, Amber didn't even want to look at her cousin's baby or even hold him.

You did a movie executive produced by Gus Van Sant, (who directed My Own Private Idaho). Has that been released?

No. Not yet. It's called Speedway Junky. We had a premiere screening recently at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It should be released soon. We're hoping to have a wide release.

You did that on your holiday hiatus from B&B. Do you ever take a vacation?

[Laughs] I try. I'm actually going to be doing another film called Luna Butterfly's. I'm working around my [soap] schedule to do it. I play this wannabe 19-year-old actress/model who does tampon commercials and she thinks she's really cool because she dates a rock star. She has this cousin who had a traumatic experience at a young age and developed a subsequent disorder where she just stayed at that young age. She's the same age mentally even though her body has physically grown older. The film shows the differences between the two women.

What else do you have going on besides B&B?

I'm talking to some music labels and am up for some film parts. I have some [contractual] outs, but I haven't used them yet. I'm writing a screenplay right now with the director of Luna Butterfly's.

Was there much of a break between when you left Sunset Beach and your role and when you joined B&B?