For the love of a beautiful Italian, she fled Santa Barbara !

 By Joan Mac Trevor, Ciné Télé Revue, 1987

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Ava Lazar, the beautiful and enigmatic Santana in Santa Barbara, lives at Stella... Stella is her cat. Splendid representative of the gutters of Los Angeles who occupies the apartment of her ruler ! Stella is the most significant partner of the actress from Hungarian origin, who has been replaced in the show by Margaret Michaels. Although she is born in Hungary, Ava Lazar grew in the United States. But she belongs to the two worlds, travelling regularly to Europe to visit her family, mainly her young seven year old sister. She fluently speaks English, French and German. In addition to Santa Barbara, she took part in various episodes of famous TV shows : Riptide, The A-Team, Simon & Simon, The Fall Guy . Without counting the pilot of a show to come which promises to be her new success : Beauty and the Beast. Ava Lazar, brown in Santa Barbara, answered the questions of Joan Mac Trevor as a blonde. Her new hair colour.

- Why did you leave Santa Barbara in full success ?
- The pressure was too strong. The schedules were too constraining and my role too caricatural. To work for Santa Barbara, it is like condemning oneself not to do anything else. One day, it is necessary to have the courage to say to yourself : that is enough !

What this dynamic young woman does not say, it is that at this time she had fallen in love with a beautiful Italian she had made a point of following in Europe. "That is true, I were engaged to an Italian and I wanted to resume my European roots, but I was convinced that my career was essential and I returned to the United States. I adore Europe, and that is my regret not to be there more often. The culture, the tradition is appreciated there. Refinement is bigger, and the rhythm of life is different." Ava Lazar does not hide her surprise to see Santa Barbara aired on the small European screens. She is convinced that the success of the show holds owes less to the characters than to what they represent : the Californian dream of the Europeans and a seducing and "glamourous" way of life different from their. Moreover, she is persuaded that if Santa Barbara has arrived in France, it is not due to chance. "When I was in Paris, I learned that the multiplicity of the TV channels in France created a request for products newer and numerous in order to fill the vacuums of the grids", she perfidiously comments.

Today, Ava Lazar temporarily stopped her search of the great love and completely gave up soaps such as Santa Barbara. She works and rests, alternating with happiness these two so essential occupations. "When I do not work, I like to read, swim, go to concert or to follow a play. A good actor must be able to devote as much time to these activities than to read scripts and to play. The accumulation of work and the abundance of scripts can create a routine where the quality of interpretation does not have any more its place."

In spite of her beauty and her youth, Ava Lazar does not fear the time which passes by. It is just the opposite ! She is persuaded that with the years will come to her greater roles and always new challenges to take up. "If only one could give me a little deeper roles, more developped some characters", she corrects. "I hates to play the femmes fatale and I am generally confined in this kind of characters." In reality, Ava Lazar's wish, in a long run, it is less popularity than longevity. The one is often fleeting, whereas the other allows the spreading out of a career and its success per degrees. To last in the memory of the public, isn't it what any actor who respects himself dreams in fact ?