A Happy Marcy Walker Comes Clean About Her Breakup With Billy Warlock, Her Current Romance and Motherhood

By Michael Logan

Marcy Walker -- she of the luscious lips, the crystal clear eyes and the hair so golden it must have been woven in a fairy tale dream -- has always seemed just this side of angelic.

In relatively short order, the twenty-six-year-old actress has emerged as a true soap superstar -- nominated twice for an Emmy as stuck-up Liza Colby on ALL MY CHILDREN and twice for her current role as heavenly heroine Eden Capwell Castillo on SANTA BARBARA. She won this year's Soap Opera Award for Oustanding Heroine. Youth and SB's miserable ratings be damned, Walker has, for the last two years, muscled her way into the Best Actress sweepstakes, usually the domain of the Luccis, the Slezaks, the Zimmers, and other grande dames.

Off camera, Walker is no less unique. Her 1985 marriage to Billy Warlock, the Emmy-winning actor who played Frankie Brady on DAYS OF OUR LIVES, delighted fans... and their seperation two-and-a-half years later triggered gossip. Not only did Warlock paint a not-so-flattering portrait of his ex when he shared his heartache with the press, Walker further raised eyebrows by quickly launching into a romance with cinematographer Stephen Collins. Though he is the father of her new baby, there are no immediate marriage plans. During the divorce proceedings, Walker wisely kept mum. But now, she's ready to clear the air. In her dressing room between takes, the actress, who achieves levels of honesty in performance that few others can manage, proves just as unabashedly forthright about her private life.

"To some people, having this baby may seem inappropriate," Marcy concedes. "Granted, it happened pretty quickly in terms of my relationship with Stephen, but I've always tried to have a very fulfilling personal life. I've always wanted kids. The pregnancy was a surprise, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I don't think there's ever a perfect time to have a kid."

"I had to constantly downplay everything that was good in my life -- my work, how much money I made -- because it made him feel bad, it made him feel competitive," says Walker of her marriage to Billy Warlock (ex-Frankie, DAYS OF OUR LIVES).

Others might disagree. Says Walker, "I was shocked at how many people responded with a 'Well, are you going to keep it? What about your career?'" Further complicating matters was her SB contract, due for renewal in September of 1988. She'd as much as decided not to sign up again but changed plans upon discovering herself in the family way. Because the pregnancy would drastically affect her story line (ironically, her character was undergoing extreme emotional torment over not conceiving), it was necessary to let her agents and reps at New World Television, the company that owns the soap, in on the secret. "And even though they weren't to tell anybody, they, of course, told everybody." Once ultrasound tests turned out A-OK, Marcy, though terrified at the prospect, called her family back in Illinois. "My mother just started crying, 'Oh, my God! I'm going to be a grandmother!' and then I started crying because it was the response I'd always wanted from her. It really meant that she loved me, that she really loved me, and that the pregnancy was a wonderful thing." Walker's two younger brothers recently moved to LA -- one is attending college and the other is remodeling her newly purchased home -- and the togetherness has created a strong sense of family she admits to never having quite felt before.

Such major life changes, happening in rapid-fire succession, would be dizzying to most folk. Walker takes them for granted. "Since I was born, everything in my life has been fast, sometimes so fast that I can't really grasp things. Events surround me like a tornado, but I believe that this happens because I am one of those people who's not going to be around for a long time. I won't live to be eighty or ninety. I think I'll die relatively young, which is why I have to learn everything now. And this is not," she says, rolling her eyes, "one of those 'guru, Hollywood observations,' but I do feel it's the reason why my life is a whirlwind." She expects her offspring may follow suit.

But where, oh where, to begin about her problems with Warlock? To backtrack a bit, Walker never got to college because she landed a role in the PBS movie version of Mark Twain's LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, which immediately led to ALL MY CHILDREN, which immediately led to SANTA BARBARA. The rise has been meteoric and she's never looked back. It was something, she says, her former husband couldn't get past.

"He thought I was somehow higher than him and I could never live it down. I couldn't jump off the pedestal. He was unhappy about everything and I couldn't be happy about anything. I think that Billy is fantastic and, in his heart, he's one of the nicest people that you'll ever meet. It's just that he hasn't been acknowledged a lot in his life and he needs -- and deserves -- a lot of everything. I was just not the person who was able to give it to him. Unfortunately, if you really love someone, you let them know when they're bad as well as when they're good. He needed as much positive reinforcement as he could get and never wanted to hear the negative. I learned that too late. I often played the devil's advocate, thinking I was helping by being honest."

Actors being actors and egos being egos, would the marriage have survived if Walker had been a secretary and Warlock had run a bowling alley?

"Probably there would have been a big difference but, being actors, we seek a lot of appreciation. I knew it was going to be tough but I had no idea how tough until after the marriage when things started to change. Actors can be married to each other and make it work -- but it depends on what kind of actor you are. Someone who acts but is really seeking something else that has nothing to do with acting will find conflict with someone who acts because that person is in love with acting. They will be like magnets that repel. As actors, we're supposed to be so communicative, so in touch with out feelings, but a lot of actors aren't -- many can only get in touch with their character's feelings. The actual communication Billy and I would have when we'd be interviewed together would be more communication than we had in our personal lives."

Still, breaking up was hard to do. In November of 1987, the actress took a leave from SB to star in the NBC-TV movie DESPERADO III, shooting on location in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She used the gig as the line of demarcation between the old and the new. "I had become resentful and wanted to close [Billy] off because I could not deal with him anymore and, for a few months prior to my leaving for Santa Fe, I had been telling him that the marriage was over. But there was a denial on his part -- even when I told him, 'It's really, really over and I'm going away to make this movie.' Then, all of a sudden, it was, 'There's someone else in your life!'"

The allegation, Marcy claims, couldn't have been further from the truth. When the DESPERADO cast and crew broke for the Thanksgiving holiday and returned to LA, the star stayed in Santa Fe. "I had finally accepted that the relationship had failed and it was much better that I was alone -- and I had never been more lonely in my life. There I was, walking around Santa Fe at nine-thirty at night, looking in store windows and crying, and it was my birthday. Oh, God, it was awful."

Things looked up shortly thereafter when she met Stephen (pronounced Stefan) three days before the shooting wrapped. "He had a very well-known girlfriend at the time and they had been dating for a year. I hooked back up with him after I returned to LA and he was no longer with her. About a month later, we started dating."

Warlock, however, reported things differently in February of 1988 in Soap Opera Now! His interview said, in part: "She literally called me on the phone from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and said, 'I don't want to be married anymore.' I haven't seen her since... This business didn't break us up as far as I'm concerned but it did, indirectly, because Marcy was on location and met some guy and said good-bye to me. But, see, I think that could have happened if she went out to the supermarket and met a guy, so I can't blame it on the business...."

Walker took it lying down. "And up one side and down the other. I read all the horrible things he would say. Some days he would be worse than others -- with one interviewer he would totally slash me, with another he'd say, 'No, no, I'm trying to really understand this.' He was feeling a sense of rejection and he hated me and I understand that. I didn't expect him to love me through it. I just expected him to respect what we had. I respect what we had and, during that time, I refused to talk about it. Not that I would have tried, but mental anguish is a difficult thing to explain. For at least three months, I was in a lot of pain because no one knew my side. Unfortunately, it has not been my forte to create supportive female relationships in LA, so I didn't have a person I could call and cry on."

Marcy also found herself the victim of a double standard. "I was the bad guy, which I thought was very unfair. If a guy leaves his girlfriend or wife, it's no big deal," she says. "I believed in simply telling people, 'The marriage ended,' but Billy, seeking support from the people at work and his friends, told everybody that I left him for another guy, because he didn't want to let anybody know the real reasons. He couldn't face it. It seemed to me to be a tactical manipulation on his part to make me look like the worst villain in the world. I don't hate him for that because he was hurt... but I was hurt, too. Now he knows that the relationship wasn't working, as well, and that it was the best thing we could have done for ourselves -- but, still, you don't go back to all your friends and say, 'You know, she really was right.' All they know is that I'm a bitch."

As to the current state of communication, Walker notes, "I think things are a lot better for him now, but I don't know what's going on in his life. I saw him at the Emmys and we talked and that was really nice. It was fun to see him again. He looked great. I was really, really excited that he won because I know how much it meant to him to be acknowledged in that way. He deserved it."

But back to the future. Though Collins, thirty-something, has asked Walker to be his bride, for the time being she wants to maintain the status quo. Married once prior to Warlock (for a year to musician Stephen Ferris, whom she met on the set of ALL MY CHILDREN), the actress states, "I don't want to make another commitment without really knowing and really understanding. I haven't always been the most perfect person. I've made mistakes just like everybody else has and it hasn't been easy. I'm certainly not against marriage. I think it's one of the most wonderful things you can ever have and I want this baby to know that it had two parents who cared about each other and cared enough about him to give him a good life. As to marriage, I'm a little afraid, to be honest."

Plans, once Walker has completed renovation of her new home, are for the couple to co-habitate. Her reluctance to wear one more ring should not be misconstrued as disinterest. "Until I met Stephen," she beams, "I never realized how important it was to have more respect for your mate than you do for yourself -- and I have a lot of respect for myself. Never before could I literally lay everything that goes on in my day into another person's hands and know that things will be well taken care of. I carried a cross of too much responsibility for too long. I was on this quest to be the perfect person, to do everything right, to make everything work. Now, I realize that things sometimes don't work, or if it gets done next week, it's fine with me. It's a much easier lifestyle and I feel at peace. And Stephen has a peace about himself. He's genuinely a sensitive person and there are no mind games that go on. I'm so satisfied to not have to try."

Via intercom, Walker is paged to the set, and the interview seems to have been as heartening as it has been exhausting.

"I've had a lot of hurdles in my life," she adds, "and I learned when I was a kid that I will never tolerate any amount of pain or anguish for any period of time. I'm adult enough to know I can work things out, but if there isn't mutual acknowledgement that it can be worked out, then I will walk away from it. Every five years that goes by is five years that's gone. I'm not saying that if it's not perfect give up -- but if a relationship is not satisfying, I won't have it. I think that I'm better than that and I think that the other person is better. After all, this isn't a dress rehearsal... this is life."