Catching up With ALL MY CHILDREN’s Lindsay Hartley (EXCLUSIVE)
On ALL MY CHILDREN, Cara Castillo was as clever as she was beautiful. Perhaps that’s why she was often able to accomplish her goals, especially with a little help! “I really loved her strength and her relationship with her brother [Griffin],” maintained the immigrant doctor’s portrayer, Lindsay Hartley. “You’re lucky if you have someone you can lean on like that.
When Soaps In Depth last caught up with the actress, she’d partnered with then-boyfriend Jason-Shane Scott (Will, ONE LIFE TO LIVE) to write television thrillers. Now a shining star amongst Reel One Entertainment’s stable of scribes, Hartley confided, “I’ve sold and produced seven screenplays and have two more in development.”
While she and Scott are still busily creating scary concepts, Hartley also now collaborates with her actress friend, Alikona Bradford, on romances. Their first greenlit tale, Love At Cedar Creek, will begin production soon. “It’s about a hard-news journalist who, feeling like something is missing in her life, visits a ranch that was the setting of a novel given to her by her late mother. While there, she meets the author and falls for her grandson,” Hartley shared. “So it’s a journey about falling in love, reconnecting with what’s important to her and honoring her mother.”
When possible, Hartley enjoys starring in her own tales, as she did in Lifetime’s April release, Deadliest Switch. However, for Mommy Is A Murderer, which also premiered recently, she got the chance to direct! “I’d put all this work into it, so I was really prepared. I drew maps, sketches, pictures…,” she revealed. “Every director has their own way of doing things or their own style. I thought, ‘I don’t know what my style is,’ so I used a lot of how I blocked my scenes during my soap days.”
Fortunately, the film featured fellow soap alumni Bree Williamson (ex-Claudette, GENERAL HOSPITAL) and Hartley’s pal from her time as PASSIONS’ Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald, Brook Kerr (Whitney, now Portia, GH), who were trained the same way. “I didn’t have to worry about the acting,” Hartley reflected. “Everybody in that cast was so good!”
The talent says that her relationship with 15-year-old daughter, Isabella, is closer than ever right now. However, the parents that she reunited with Perfect On Paper co-star Bart Johnson to play in Lifetime’s upcoming film, Young, Rich, And Pregnant (working title), have much greater difficulties: Their girl is knocked up! Worse yet, Hartley explains, their nemesis is the other prospective grandmother who “wants to take the baby and give her son a new life in another town.”
