As Pam on The Bold and the Beautiful, Alley Mills sometimes asked to act like a raging lunatic.

And, as the actress tells Soap Opera Weekly, she loves every second of it!

Soap Opera Weekly: Do you have a blast when Pam just goes completely off the rails?
Alley Mills: I totally do. It was such a surprise when Brad (Bell, head writer and executive producer) wrote the first [return for Pam], which was when they were looking for who shot Stephanie. I remember one of our set dressers said to me, "Are you off your medication?" and I gasped, because I hadn't read that [in the scripts] yet.

You don't read anything in advance, and I was like, "That's what's happening!" So I just went for it, and I thought that was such a great idea: to suddenly turn this pretty normal, pathetic person from the Midwest that she was before — Pam the baker — into Pam the psycho. It's really fun.

Weekly: What's your favorite thing about Pam?
Mills: The thing that I love that Brad has done is that he made Pam funny. She's smart and has wheels turning in her head, so that makes everything easier. Betty White's Ann is like that, too. She's not a dummy, and she's kind of funny. You can have latitude. You can be mean, but it's not awful, and it doesn't make people hate you completely. I can't tell you, though, how many people have come up to me and said that Pam's mean. It really hurts my feelings. I was in Palm Springs, and this lady goes, "I know you!" I went, "Oh, hi!" and she said, "You're Pam!"

That doesn't happen to me a lot, because people usually know me from THE WONDER YEARS. She said, "You're so mean to that girl." I said, "Wait a second, that girl stole my sister's husband right out from underneath her nose." She went, "You have a point!" and I went, "Yeah, I have a point!" Even though Donna is such a sweet girl, she's an airhead to Pam.

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