SB'S LATEST EDITION

It's Signy. Not Sidney or Cindy. "I say, 'It's Sig like in pig – pigny.' People laugh at that when I tell them." The mystery surrounding the name of Santa Barbara's Signy Coleman, who plays the multi-dimensional role of Celeste/Crystal on NBC's Emmy-winning soap, is thus...

"My mother found it in a book of Scandinavian mythology. My mom's name is Mary and she wanted her children to have more unusual names. She opened the book and there was this legend called 'Signy's Wedding Feast.' She thought that Signy was a beautiful name. She always said she knew I was going to be a girl and she named me before I was born."

The complex life of her TV character is a definite contrast to her deeply-rooted family upbringing. "I had a very sort of grounded, very healthy environment to grow up in. I'm from a very small town in northern California that had a general store and a post office. It was a nice, protective environment, yet we were exposed to a lot."

Though currently living in the Hollywood Hills, memories of growing up in Mill Valley are still ever-present. Living in a turn of the century house built on an acre of cultivated garden paths, going to school in a little white school house with a bell tower surrounded by horse pastures, and horseback riding for hours made Signy ask, "'Doesn't everybody grow up like this?' Then you get out in the real world and realize 'no.'"

"Getting into character" as Celeste is very easy for Signy, due to her background. "It's recalling the young person I was. I was very, very shy in high school. I didn't date. I was involved in my studies. I've really spent days and weeks remembering my high school years."

"Getting into character" as Crystal was much more complicated. Knowing that hard work pays off, Signy spent weeks researching the part of this down-and-out prostitute. "I walked up and down Hollywood Boulevard. I'd pull over and just study people's movements and lifestyles. I talked to various people who had been involved in shady careers. I really like to find a core to the character I am doing, to bring a reality to it."

Signy did her homework better than she thought. When she went for her audition at NBC she dressed the part – torn, baggy pants, ripped tennis shoes, a tired jeans jacket – the guard wouldn't let her into the studio! Bringing out the many levels of Celeste and Crystal have become a real challenge for Signy. "She's just a wonderful character because she has so many levels. She's vulnerable, yet she's tough. She's hard, yet she's just a pushover to help people. She's trying to hide a terrible secret, yet she wants to be honest with people.

"Celeste is trying to be this sweet, young thing she was in high school. There's this vulnerable, very honest and trusting young girl who really cares about people. Whenever she's Celeste, this is the person she is trying to be. She's remembering this person who seems to be so foreign to her, but she wants to recapture this person. Crystal knows her way around anything. ...She knows how to manipulate men. She also has a sharp, acid sense of humor which gets her by in a lot of situations. I don't look at that as being bad. I look at that as being realistic in a 'big bad world.'"

The relationship between a prostitute and a priest isn't a duo many producers would want to tackle, but the folks at SB fear no evil. "Father Michael is the only person Celeste really trusts. ...He understands her. He was a cop and has been on the streets and they have a chemistry. ...She looks up to him almost like a father figure." The on-screen seriousness of Celeste and Father Michael is balanced by the off-screen pranks that Signy and Frank Runyeon play on each other. "Last week I taped a little note to the back of Frank that said 'GEEK.' He walked around for an hour with it on!"

Crazy antics like this are not new to Signy. It started long ago. When she was little... "Mother left for an hour to do something. My sister, Bethany, and I wanted to find out how many times we could actually go around in the dryer before we passed out or got sick. So, being the smallest, my sister decided we'd experiment on me first. She put me in the dryer. I went around abut three times and we heard this big creak and boom. Smoke came out the back of the dryer and we're thinking, 'Oh, no.' My mom was due back in 15 minutes so we wrote a note to her saying, 'Dear mom, please don't be mad at us, we broke the dryer.' We taped it to the front door. We went and hid for about six hours," Signy laughs. A little mischief here, a little mischief there. It looks like this is someone we definitely need to keep an eye on.