We Love Soaps Interview Archive: Linda Cook

Actress Linda Cook is fondly remembered for her roles on many of the New York-based daytime soap operas. In the mid-1970s, she played Laurie Ann Karr on The Edge of Night. In 1988, Cook joined the cast of Loving as Egypt Jones and gave one unforgettable performance after another. We Love Soaps caught up with the actress in 2009 to reminisce about her soap days and find out about her second career in real estate.

Part One - Cook discussed her life growing up, her role on The Edge of Night and how working on live television helped save her wedding.

Part Two - Cook talked about her memorable run as Egypt on Loving, her battle with breast cancer, the friendship she developed with Carroll O'Connor, and transitioning to a career in real estate.

RELATED:
- Linda Cook Has Passed Away: Star of LOVING, EDGE OF NIGHT, ALL MY CHILDREN, AS THE WORLD TURNS, RYAN'S HOPE

Linda Cook Has Passed Away: Star of LOVING, EDGE OF NIGHT, ALL MY CHILDREN, AS THE WORLD TURNS, RYAN'S HOPE

Actress Linda Cook Mann passed away on April 12 in New York City. The actress played memorable roles on a number of soaps including THE EDGE OF NIGHT, RYAN'S HOPE, LOVING, ALL MY CHILDREN and AS THE WORLD TURNS. In recent years she worked in real estate. We Love Soaps interviewed Linda in 2009 and she proved to be as delightful and courageous as she was talented.

She spoke about dealing with breast cancer in 1992 while continuing to work: "I was doing a show Off-Broadway at the time called 'Dearly Departed' and I was getting ready to go out to L.A. I think I had just had like a million dollars worth of pictures taken with my long, blonde hair. The show we were doing was a really black comedy about death.

WLS Interview: Catching Up With Linda Cook, Part Two

In Part One of the We Love Soaps interview with soap veteran Linda Cook, the actress talked about moving around as a child, how she got into acting, and her memorable role as Laurie Ann on THE EDGE OF NIGHT. In the second and final part, Cook talks about her memorable run as Egypt on LOVING, her battle with breast cancer, the friendship she developed with Carroll O'Connor, and shares what she's up to now.

We Love Soaps: After your role as Lucy on ALL MY CHILDREN, you went the complete opposite direction with Egypt Jones on LOVING.
Linda Cook: Trash. Total trash. Trashy characters are the most fun.

We Love Soaps: Do you have any memorable scenes as Egypt that stand out in your mind?
Linda Cook: [Laughs] Oh, I just remember the scenes with Randy Mantooth where we'd have on our sneakers underneath the covers. Randy was always falling in love, in real life, with some brunette. Blondes were not his thing. I was like, 'I can't help it, Randy, I'm a blonde in this show.' He was funny in my audition. I had just come back from L.A. to do a show Off-Broadway, and was told there was an audition for the soap. One thing I learned out there was that no one has any imagination in casting when it comes to casting you in a part they don't think you're like. You have to absolutely go in like the character. They told me this character was trashy so I went in a really short, black dress and high heels. The casting guy at LOVING was so great. He said, 'You absolutely nailed it, but when you come back you have to wear something whore-ier.' And I went, 'Okay, I'll just look in my closet for the whore-y clothes.' I think I wore a turquoise tube top for a skirt, and pink tube top for a top. It just got trashier after that. I went there in character. Everybody else looked seriously sexy in black, and I looked like something out of a bubblegum machine. And they cast me.

We Love Soaps: What was the audition scene like?
Linda Cook: When we did the screen test, it was a scene about 'I'm back, and I'm know you're rich, and now you have all this money and never divorced me, ha ha, ha.' Everybody was playing it pretty tough and I was playing it like, 'Isn't this cool, I just hit the lottery, I'm so happy.' Randy was doing kind of a very low key read during the audition, and I leaned in and said, 'I'm a little deaf in this ear, could you talk a little louder?' Which is true. So he kind of looked at me like I was insane. And I played the scene like, 'Hi, how are you, I just won the lottery, yippee' and got part. Two or three months into it, one of the casting people who hadn't known me before said, 'Now that I know you, I never would have thought of you in a million years for this character.' And I said, 'I know. That's the problem.' I had been playing doctors and lawyers and stuff at that point.

WLS Interview: Catching Up With Linda Cook, Part One

Over the past few decades Linda Cook has appeared on all four of the current New York soaps, but is probably best remembered for her roles on two shows no longer on the air. In the mid-1970s, Cook played Laurie Ann Karr on THE EDGE OF NIGHT. In 1988 she joined the cast of LOVING as Egypt Jones and gave one unforgettable performance after another. We Love Soaps recently caught up with the actress to reminisce about her soap days and find out about her second career in real estate. In Part One, Cook discusses her life growing up, her role on EDGE and how working on live television helped save her wedding.

We Love Soaps: Can you share with our readers a little bit about your background? Where did you grow up?
Linda Cook: I was born in Lubbock, Texas, and lived there until I was about three. My dad was from there and was a farmer's kid in West Texas, outside of Wichita Falls. He married my mom, who is from Belfast, Ireland, after World War II. They went back there and he was going to school at Texas Tech University and started working following school. After he was working for a while, he was transferred to Omaha, Nebraska, so I spent most of my little childhood there, from 3 to 9, and I lived in Dallas for a year, and then he was transferred to Atlanta after getting promoted, and we stayed there.

We Love Soaps: Did you always want to be an actress?
Linda Cook: I got a job there working for a ballet company. I got my equity card dancing in star stock summer musicals in the chorus. My first paying job was dancing the part of the little girl in "Carousel" at around 16. It was suggested to me by some of the people I was dancing with that I should audition for a theater company in Atlanta. I did and got in. So I made this immediate transition into being an actress. Your body falls apart very quickly as a dancer and you can only do that for so long. Unless you become a Prima Ballerina by the time you're about 18, it's a hard life. Dancers are so much better now than when I was a dancer. It's a good thing I became an actress.

When they give us those Kuder Preference Tests in high school, they all came out that I should be an actress, which is strange because I was trying to make them come out for me to be a dancer. [Laughs] I was a very good student and was into art a lot and was a painter. I got scholarships as a painter and writer, but I just had the bug, and went back to dancing and got into a real theater company in Atlanta. From there I did all different kinds of theater in the southeast and did television and commercials and film work. One of the plays I was doing down there was going to be done in New York, and the producer said, 'I would like the guy who plays the lead and the girl who plays the little sister to come up and audition against the New York actors.' I had an actress friend in New York and came up and stayed with her to audition for a couple of things. I actually got hired for a show Off-Broadway before I got to the other audition.

We Love Soaps: That couldn't have been long before your role as Laurie Ann on THE EDGE OF NIGHT.
Linda Cook: It was right around the same time. I had just done one show Off-Broadway, in which Anthony Perkins from Psycho was the director and John Heard played my husband. As soon as that was over, I got on THE EDGE OF NIGHT. That was in 1975.