Kristen Meadows threatened of death by fans of Santa Barbara
By Alena Prime, Télé Star, 1992	Home   Cette page en Français

To cheat with their birth date is one of the favorite coquetries of the Hollywood actresses who well easily declare a few years less than their official age ! On the contrary, Kristen Meadows had to get older to make her beginnings on a scene. She was only twelve years old when she obtained the main part of a musical whose music was directed by her grandfather, a band-master. "My character was supposed to be sixteen. Except my grandfather, nobody never knew that I was in fact much younger than the role. As I was already very tall, it is true that I made older then than I was actually."

If the public, at the time, did not accused Kristen of trickery, it get differently when, a few years later, the actress accepted to play Tori in Santa Barbara. "Tori never succeeded to get loved by the televiewers. The unconditional fans of Cruz and Eden did not forgive my character to interpose herself in the life of the star couple. The writers came to the rescue by imagining an incredible series of misfortunes which, while falling down on Tori, should have made her pathetic and to ensure the sympathy of the public to her. In vain. I received thousands of letters of hate, some even containing death threats. I never understood very well that the televiewers do not manage to make the difference between an actor and the fictional character he plays. I could not support it any more. This is why I left Santa Barbara."

A forced departure that the actress regrets more especially as she feels herself particularly comfortable in this kind of fiction. "During five years, I had played a heroin, sympathetic this time, in a daytime soap like Santa Barbara. I adore that. If I listened to myself, I would only work for these kinds of productions. You play regularly and, especially, never outside. I do not like to leave far from home. Last autumn, my participation in an episode of MacGyver obliged me to go away several days and to get separated from Sam. I was so sad."

Sam ? A two years old fair little boy, who runs in the house where Kristen receives us. "He arrived in my life at a time when I expected it less. Of course, I wanted a child. But I would have wished to choose the moment of his birth. It is true that in this job we tend to delay the expiry of maternity, hoping to have a little more time later. And then you are thirty... The announce of my pregnancy nevertheless threw me into a panic, so much more so as the father was not the man of my life. We are besides still not married, but we wonderfully get along. We share the guard of Sam who spends half of the week with his dad, a doctor, the other one with me. Of course, I would have preferred to have my little boy for me all alone. But this separation does not harm Sam at all. At two years old, he understood that a separate couple could very well get along and make despite all the happiness of a child."