Stars in alignment: Husband and wife soap stars put on play to raise money for Marco Film Festival 

By Richard Ferrara

Special to the Naples Daily News

Colleen Zenk-Pinter has been playing the role of Barbara Ryan on CBS' daytime drama "As the World Turns" since 1978. It wasn't until last year that Zenk-Pinter was recognized for her long-running performance with an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress.

This year she's up for another Emmy, only it's a step higher in category: Lead Actress.

"It's great," Zenk-Pinter said, clearly excited about her latest Emmy nod. "This year, as they say, I 'broke in' to the Lead Actress category. So it's been a great year, I've had a wonderful story to work with, and it's really nice to be recognized for that.”

Colleen's husband, Mark Pinter (who most recently played the scheming Roger Smythe on "All My Children"), couldn't be happier for her.

"She makes me walk one step behind her wherever we go," he joked. "She's tremendously deserving of this Emmy nomination. All I can say is that it's about time. We have our fingers crossed for her; she's got a real good chance. We're all very, very proud of her.”

The Pinters will both be guests at the Marco Island Film Festival's fund-raising event beginning Wednesday, starring in a two-actor show, A.R. Gurney's poignant "Love Letters.”

The Pinters are among 16 other actors -- two more of them also Emmy Award nominees this year -- who will be participating in the festivities (Festival guests Vincent Irizarry of "All My Children" and Jordi Villasuso of "Guiding Light" are also nominees.)

This won't be the Pinters' first time in Naples.

"We're no strangers to the area," Zenk-Pinter said. "My mother has lived in Naples since 1975, so I've watched that town grow and grow. And Mark has two brothers with winter homes there."

In fact, some of Zenk-Pinter's earliest stage work was here.

"I was actually down in Naples before my mother came. I was doing 'Barefoot in the Park' at the Naples Dinner Theatre in 1975. It had just opened, I think it was the first year," she said.

Colleen's mother, Ruthie Zenk, has seen her daughter develop from working as an actress on the Naples stage to an Emmy-nominated television star. She can't help showing her pride.

"I have never gone around advertising the fact that she was my daughter, but last year I started doing it," Zenk said. "Mother's very proud.”

Zenk-Pinter will return to the stage in Naples in what has become a staple for her and her husband -- a simple two-character production about the relationship between Andrew Makepeace Ladd II, a dutiful lawyer, and the lively, but emotionally taut, artist Melissa Gardner.

"We've done it more than a dozen times at all different venues all over the country and Canada, always for charity, and it's a beautiful play," Zenk-Pinter said. "We really enjoy doing it together, and it's very easy to mount. It's easy to go somewhere and do it quickly without having to travel with a set or even a director," she said.

"It's a reading of letters that these characters have exchanged with one another through the course of their lives," Pinter said. "The characters grow up together and then take two very different paths, but they continue to correspond. It's just a beautifully illustrated piece about two people who cling to one another spiritually but not physically.

"It's really a very personal piece for the audience, because just about everybody can relate something in their lives to one of these letters.”

The Pinters feel right at home performing together. They first met on the set of "As the World Turns" when they both happened to be on the show. They were married not long after. Today they live in Connecticut with a blended family of two boys and four girls.

Between both of their busy acting careers the Pinters would seem to have their hands quite full on the homefront, but the couple somehow pulls it off well.

"We've been really lucky as far as how our schedules have worked," Zenk-Pinter said. "We don't have live-in help and all that, we manage on our own. The kids are a little older now and more sufficient. When they were babies it was more difficult, but it's certainly more manageable now," she said.

Maybe the Pinters' secret is keeping the kids occupied in the daytime with their soap operas?

"They never watch!" Zenk-Pinter exclaimed, laughing.

On camera, the Pinters are far from model parents.

"We're both just bad," Zenk-Pinter said of their TV characters. On "As the World Turns," she plays a self-consumed Barbara Ryan, stricken with rage and misfortune, allowing little time for her children.

"She's become really on the brink of madness," Zenk-Pinter said. "Being a negligent mother was probably the beginning of it, and realizing what she had done to her family. She was in a horrible explosion and became terribly disfigured. She's gone into the depths of madness to try and take revenge on the people who she thinks are responsible for the shambles of her life.”

Mark Pinter is the quintessential bad guy of the soap-opera scene. He may be most infamously known for his role as Grant Harrison on "Another World," for which he won the Soap Opera Award for Best Daytime Villain in 1996. Most recently, as Roger Smythe on "All My Children," he was an avaricious man whose schemes come before his daughter.

"I've always played bad guys," Pinter said. "I've done soap operas for 20 years on five or six different shows and for the most part I always get cast as the bad guy, but it's not that I look like a bad guy, with scars or anything.

"I'm grateful for it because bad guys are infinitely more interesting to play than good guys. If you play a bad guy who can fall in love or who has children, then that's attractive to the audience. You can get away with murder, so to speak.”

Pinter's extensive bad-guy experience has enabled him to master one of daytime's patented techniques: The music takes on a sinister tone, the camera zooms closer on the villain's face, and right before the scene cuts, he gives "the look.”

"That's one of daytime's little things," he said with a laugh. "You have to do 'the look' at the end of a scene. That's not an easy thing to do, especially when you have to hold it for 20 seconds."

Does he ever burst into laughter?

"Oh, sure," he said. "You have to master that without giggling or falling apart with laughter every time.”

The Pinters and, fittingly, all their children are all coming for the festival's long weekend. They are looking forward to their "Love Letters" performance and spending some family time in Naples again.

"We actually get the benefit of being on stage together and having a little vacation as well," Pinter said.

"And we plan on resting and basking in the sun with our children and our family," Zenk-Pinter added.