Kassie DePaiva Interviews Hillary B. Smith

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In a special Soap Opera Digest feature, One Life to Live star Kassie DePaiva (pictured) interviews fellow One Life to Live star Hillary B. Smith.

Here are highlights of the conversation:

DePaiva: You are extremely talented and have done stage, primetime and soap opera. What vein of work, or what medium, did you find the most challenging?
Smith: Two things. I find films very, very challenging because it's so much downtime. It's just hard to keep up the performance and then you cut and break down and they turn the lights around, so you have hours [until] you go back and try to do that performance from a different angle. I have great respect for film actors. Sitcoms were very challenging because what we got on Monday was very rarely what we ended up shooting on Friday. However, having said that, there are challenges to all mediums.

DePaiva: So you've done it all. Let's talk about your films. What is your favorite role that you have done?
Smith: I played this woman who was not necessarily bipolar, but haunted. It was a short [film], but it was six days of going to a really painful place because this woman was completely and utterly in agony. She loved her child, she couldn't show it, she was exhausted, she smoked nonstop, she was constantly going over conversations in her head, she was preoccupied, she was trying to do everything the right way and she just couldn't do anything right during this time. It was cathartic and it was deep and I think that was my favorite because it was so consuming.

Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.