-Fax or Fiction? SOU 1/12/90
-She's Glad to Be Bad, The Record 10/19/90
-GH Boss Gloria Monty Axed After Firing Finola Hughes, 1991
-There is Life After Soaps, mid-1990s
-Simply Lovely, In Style Magazine mid-1990s

She's Glad to Be Bad- An Actress Relishes Role as Villian (by Susan King, The Record Oct. 19, 1990)
"Finola Hughes has made a momentous decision. 'I am going to cut my hair,' she said, running her fingers through her long brown tresses. 'I am so sick of it. It's so boring and it doesn't do anything. It just hangs there. I have been talking about cutting it for two years, but I finally made the appointment.'
     The British ballerina-turned-actress was sitting on the floor of her cluttered dressing room at ABC in Hollywood during her lunch break from the popular daytime soap General Hospital. The walls were filled with photos of James Dean ('I like his face'), Marilyn Monroe, Jack Nicholson, and Clark Gable and clips about Twin Peaks.
     Hughes had agreed to give a rare interview not to discuss her hair but her role as the strong-willed Anna Devane Lavery on General Hospital, which airs weekday afternoons, and her newest venture into prime-time, playing a villain opposite All My Children star Susan Lucci in the ABC thriller The Bride in Black, airing sunday night on ABC.
     'I really like playing a bad person, Hughes said. 'It's great fun. You get the best lines and you get to play around with people. I played a bad person to Susan Lucci before [in the TV movie Secret Passions]. The Bride in Black, which will air sunday night on ABC, is losely based on Francois Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black. 'I never saw the first one,' Hughes said. 'Is there one?'
     Hughes probably won't see The Bride in Black either. 'I gave my television away. I don't watch any of it. I used to watch MTV. The dancing they do on the videos, that's really cool.' But what about Twin Peaks? 'Are you kidding?' she said. 'Look at my wall. I get that recorded for me.'
     Since checking into General Hospital nearly six years ago, Hughes has made several forays into prime time, including a stint on L.A. Law a few years back. 'I did three shows with Jimmy absolutely incredibly beautiful Smits,' Hughes said with a smile. 'He's great.'
     Hughes doesn't know if it is easier now for daytime stars to make the leap into prime time. 'I don't know anything anymore,' she said. 'That's the truth. The whole thing is a complete enigma to me how any of it happens. Whatever happens happens.'
     It is her friendships with the cast and crew of General Hospital that keep Hughes interested in the series. 'That is the whole thing,' she said. 'You come in and get to do some work and have a blast.' Hughes laughed. 'If half the things that happened to Anna happened to me, I know I would be committed,' she said. 'This guy from my past came back from 13 years ago and messed up my life for a while. We have got rid of him and now I am a hostage. We are in a hostage situation on the top of the hospital, which happens all the time.'
     After filming the 1983 movie Stayin' Alive, in which she played a catty dancer who bewitched John Travolta, Hughes decided to move from England to California. I really liked it here,' she said. 'It's a really welcoming place. I just liked the fact that if you want to do something, you can pretty much get it together and do it.'
     Hughes didn't work for a long time. 'I was just horrible,' she said, laughing. 'I was horrible at auditions, whatever; it was a nightmare. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I still don't have a clue, but I can fake it perhaps now. But then I was awful; the whole [auditioning] process was terrible.'
     Getting General Hospital was a fluke. She learned from someone at ABC that Gloria Monty, who was then producer, was looking for an actress to play Anna. 'I met with Gloria and that was it,' Hughes said. 'She is just great.'
     Hughes doesn't like to talk about her past. Ask her why she was drawn to ballet at a young age and she quickly changes the subject. 'The scrip of Bride in Black is pretty good,' she said. 'David Soul [who co-stars in the movie] is real nice.'
     The actress did say that she still goes to dance and acting classes. 'I kind of like keeping in touch with students,' she said. 'I like being in that atmosphere. I really enjoy classes. It's not that I am a perpetual student. I have never been that, even when I was growing up. I enjoy the questioning. Instead of being accepting or complacent, I challenge and question.'
     Hughes stretched out out her long dancers' legs and leaned up against her closet door. 'I got Gene Kelly's autograph once,' she said with pride. 'I did a royal command performance [for Queen Elizabeth] and Gene Kelly was the host. I went into his room and gave him the program and said, "I never do this but you have to sign this, you have to." And he said, "I understand."'
     The royal command performance, Hughes said, was 'one of the coolest things I ever did. I remember I was standing backstage with my partner and thinking, 'I really want to throw up now.' All I could say was, 'Oh my God. Oh my God. But it was cool.'
     And it is still cool for Hughes on General Hospital. 'You can take a vacation,' she said. 'I go back East and hang out in New York. We work all year around and do millions and millions of shows. It's an extraordinary process.'"

General Hospital Boss Gloria Monty Axed After Firing Finola Hughes (1991)  "Controversial General Hospital producer Gloria Monty has been axed by the soap- after she shocked popular Finola Hughes by suddenly firing her.
     Emmy-winning Hughes, 30, had argued with boss Monty earlier in the day, but had no hint she was about to be canned.
     Says a source:  "After Finola rehearsed a scene, Gloria came up, put her arm around Finola, gave her a big hug and said, 'I hope you enjoyed the scene.  It was your last.  Pack up and get out of here.'  Finola's a professional, so she finished taping the sequence, packed some things and left."
     Now the tough TV boss has joined Finola in the ranks of the unemployed.  "Firing Finola was the straw that broke the camel's back," says an insider.  "ABC had been looking to get rid of Gloria, and her firing of Finola gave them a reason."  Monty, 68, had left GH once before and was brought back amid much fanfare last year. "She was hired to take the show from no. 2 to no. 1," says the source.  "Instead, she took it to no. 7."
     ABC executive Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin says Monty resigned for personal reasons. "We are indebted to Gloria for her contributions over the years," adds Dwyer-Dobbin, Senior Vice-President for Daytime Programming.  "We thank her for the excitement and creativity she brought, and wish her well in future endeavors."

There is Life After Soaps- Finola Hughes (ex-Anna, mid-1990s)
"Former GH adversaries Finola Hughes and Kin Shriner (ex-Scotty) had a happy reunion playing lovers in the upcoming TV movie The Crying Child.
     Although they worked together for seven years on GH, it's the first time the two have shared the small screen as lovers. Finola plays a psychologist and Kin a general practitioner who joins forces to help a couple being spooked by sounds of an infant's wailing after their baby is stillborn.
     'I think Anna thought Scott was a sleazy, slimy, no-account kind of guy,' Kin teases. 'But in this movie, Finola's character chases me all over the island. But, she was a good kisser, so it really wasn't too bad being chased.'
     Finola has a different version. 'No matter what he says, his character was after mine,' she insists. 'I was his love interest, not the other way around.'
     Finola says her character has come to the aid of a friend (played by Mariel Hemingway) who has gone with her husband (played by George DelHoyo, formerly known as George Deloy, ex-Rob, Generations) to their family's island retreat to recover from her baby's death.
     'She begins to hear weird noises all the time, like a baby crying,' the actress explains. 'Everyone thinks she's hearing things because she's just lost a child, so my character, who's her best friend, comes to help her deal with her loss. Kin plays the local doctor who winds up falling for me and helping us unravel the mystery of the crying child.
     'Actually, our GH dressing rooms were next to each other, and we were really good friends, so it was a great deal of fun to be together again,' Finola adds.  The Crying Child, a USA Pictures Original, airs June 26 at 9 p.m. on the USA Network."

Simply Lovely  Finola Hughes's look may be fanciful, but it's based on time-tested products and a no-nonsense routine  (In Style magazine, by Mary Lisa Gavenas, mid 1990s?)
"Her technique is so efficient it borders on the brusque. Pinched between thumb and forefinger, the pencil circles the edge of her mouth without a wated motion, immediately followed by a similarly well-aimed swipe of lipstick. Lips are pressed together, puckered, excess color blotted with a tissue. Then Finola Hughes appraises her performance in the mirror as a dancer would check placement, glancing at her glamourous image with neither narcissism nor self-doubt. 'I've been applying makeup professionally since I was an 11-year old at Covent Garden,' says the British-born actress, now 43, who stars in the NBC sitcom Blossom. 'They couldn't make up 20 little girls individually, so they showed you and you got on with it. You learned by trial and error.'

After her balley-student days, Hughes won a role in the original London cast of Cats, was recruited by Sylvester Stallone to star opposite John Travolta in Staying Alive, and won an Emmy during her seven-year stint as Anna Devane on General Hospital. Among other advantages, her acting career put Hughes in 'the really fortuitous position of getting to try a lot of beauty products and being exposed to a lot of makeup artists.' (Her recent gleanings include these two tips: Prescriptives' Camouflage Cream can double as foundation, and antibacterial soaps like Lever 2000 go a long way toward preventing breakouts after an all-day shoot in heavy makeup under hot lights.) 'I don't like to fuss around with high-tech things. I'm not very adventuresome.'

And when it gets down to beauty basics like washing her face or taking a bath, Hughes is postively reactionary. Bathroom shelves and dressing room counters are crammed with the likes of Vaseline, Nivea, Oil of Oly, Basis, and Pond's. Hughes sticks to drugstore brands, and she never tries to imitiate anybody else. 'Whne I'm at an audition, I'll look up and see a room full of impeccably groomed, 7-foot tall blondes. I just go back to reading my book. What can you do about it?' says the 5-foot-5-inch Hughes, who, after a decade in California, is still somewhat aghast at the prevalence of plastic surgeons, image consultants and wardrobe planners.

Hughes remembers exactly how and when she decided to ignore the experts. 'When I was 13, I thought that I should have a face-cleaning routine, and I pestered my mother to get me a very expensive brand at Harrods. She bought me the whole thing- cleansing cream, toner, moisturizer. When I tried it my face exploded. I was red and sore for days. I never used it again. It sat on the shelf, and I'd look at it and think of how much it had cost and what my mother could have done with the money.'

'I grew up in London during the seventies- the prime of punk and every other fad you can think of- so I don't worry much about fashion,' says Hughes, who continues to go her own way, with straight-from-the-drugstore skin care, resolutely untrendy long hair, and a propensity for dramatic dressing, like the black velvet fish-tail gown by the Austrian-born designer Richard Tyler.

'I stick to the tried and true,' says Hughes, shown applying Spice lip pencil from M.A.C. Cosmetics, a line she discovered "years ago, when it began to dominate TV makeup studios."' Another aspect of her admiration for the classics is her passion for vintage clothes, collected anywhere and everywhere, from Pasadena swap meets to Lily et Cie, the West Hollywood boutique where she found this museum-quality dressing gown.

Waist-length locks are Hughes' trademark, not her preoccupation. She shampoos with Revlon's Outrageous or Pantene ('Whichever is handier') and conditions ('now and then') with the Body Shop's Henna Treatment Wax.

Finola's Favories:
Washing up- What Hughes uses to wash her face varies according to what's handy, or what she or her husband (British photographer and music-video director Russell Young) picked up at the drugstore. Most often, she uses Basis, a mild, superfatted soap for sensitive skin; Neutrogena; or Oil of Olay's Foaming Face Wash.

Rinsing off- Generic wtich hazel follows as an astringent. 'If I'm felling grimy, I'll use Clinique Clarifying Lotion #1.'

Staying Smooth- On eyes and lips she's apt to apply Elizabeth Arden's Eight-Hour Cream, although she pronounces Vaseline Petroleum Jelly, 'brillant for spots like knees and elbows.' Her daytime moisturizer is Oil of Olay with SPF 15, and she avoids sun damage 'by simply staying out of the sun... I enjoy acting the eccentric Englishwoman with a white umbrella and a big hat.'

Air conditioning- if she's spending a lot of time on airplanes, Hughes uses E-45 Cream, available only in England, as a heavy-duty moisturizer.

A splash of scent- her everyday fragrance is the German perfume 4711, available at pharmacies. 'My grandmother used it, and it has a fresh smell that doesn't offend anyone.'

A sensible splurge- Her most costly beauty buy is Chanel's Perfecting Powder, at $36.50. 'The makeup artist on the film The Dark Side of Genius convinced me that it was the best powder available, so it seemed worth the money.