Catching up With All My Chlidren's Jill Larson (EXCLUSIVE)

Actress Jill Larson (Opal, ALL MY CHILDREN) isn’t afraid to try new things, especially if it means getting to transform herself. “I’ve always been more comfortable in character roles,” she admitted to Soaps In Depth. “I get released from my vanity.”

AMC’s quirky Opal, with her colorful wardrobe and outlandish accessories,
had definitely fit that bill. Since then, Larson has found her career going in an entirely new but equally entertaining direction. Now on Amazon Prime is The Taking Of Deborah Logan, the horror film in which she plays a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But as the actress explained, the crew capturing her decline for a documentary learns that “it’s actually something quite different — it’s more in the realm of possession!”

Jill Larson Deborah Logan — “It seems that my decline is faster than one would expect,” Larson said of her titular role in *The Taking of Deborah Logan*.Erik Justin

Unfamiliar with the horror genre, Larson had been reticent to take the job. However, the overwhelmingly positive reaction she’s received made her realize that “just like the soap operas, these films have a huge, passionate following. So for me, it was like coming into a new world, much like I’d felt coming out of the theater and into [daytime TV].”

Eager to try it again, Larson jumped into Crones, a film that’s part of an anthology series being made by the producers of Insidious for Amazon. “I play a witch who has eternal youth!” she said, grinning. “Barbara Hershey is a newcomer to the retirement home that Bruce Davison, Fran Bennett and I have been living in for decades. But at night, we become 20 years old again!”

In a whole other way, the star went back in time — to the 1970s, to be exact — for her appearance in the second episode of Amazon’s new drama series, HUNTERS. In it, “Al Pacino’s character is part of a small group of Jews who’ve been hunting down Nazis for some time,” she shares. “I’m a woman who didn’t know that her husband was ever a Nazi because he’s now in the United States with a whole different identity.”

AMC Palmer Opal — “I remember the Cinderella story where I was locked in the attic — I climbed out the window and managed to get to the big Pine Valley ball,” said the AMC alum in character. “That’s when Palmer saw me and realized, ‘Oh yes, I guess I *can* love this woman.”Ann Limongello/ABC

Having returned to New York after AMC wrapped and her daughter, Anni-Ming, finished high school, Larson became involved with a workshop company called The Actors Center (whose roster also includes AMC’s former Livia, Tonya Pinkins). Creatively inspired, she recently finished writing a memoir about her late-in-life journey into motherhood. “The introduction talks about the day I came into the studio and went directly to Susan Lucci’s (Erica) dressing-room door and just shoved the postage-sized picture that I’d received from the adoption coordinator at her,” Larson says. “We both just stood there in awe of this little baby that was halfway around the world and going to become my daughter.”

For more on what your favorite AMC stars are up to now, keep reading the ABC edition of Soaps In Depth magazine.

This story originally appeared in our print magazine