"What Can Brown Do For You?"

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After GH, No One Expected A Star Like Sarah Brown To Come Back To Soaps- Until Life Brought Her to ATWT’s Door

Sarah Brown (Julia, As the World Turns) often compares her state of being in the past month or so to Alice in Wonderland- you know, life turned topsy-turvy in a crazy, queasy rush that’s as exhilarating as it is scary. She not only thrives on that feeling; she seeks it out. In 2001, at the height of stunning success on daytime, amid massive fan outcry and General Hospital’s desperate attempts to keep her in the central role of Carly, Brown just walked away. Which is why when she chose to return to daytime, everyone was shocked.

“I called my agent and said, ‘Can you get me a job on a soap in New York City?’ They were like, ‘You want to do what?’” laughs the actress, whose move was strategic for personal reasons, not career. Shuki Levy, the father of her 6-year old daughter, Jordan, would be in New York for work; the parents simply wanted to be on the same coast. “I’ve had lots of offers in the last few years to come back, and I’ve just said, ‘I’m not interested; thank you so much. I’m busy and don’t really want to go back to daytime because it’s too grueling.’ But this really worked out for my life, and it’s been perfect. I didn’t want to move to New York City without a steady job. They were very generous in offering me a short-term deal, so it worked out. As long as I’m not locked in to any one thing, I’m a happy girl.”

In other words, don’t get any ideas- she remains, as always, unabashedly forthcoming about other ambitions, which include film and directing. She has worked constantly in the last three years, in movies and guest spots on TV, while coming frustratingly close to winning lead roles on several prime-time dramas. “Always a bridesmaid,” she sighs of her string of disappointments. “But it’s all right. ‘What does not kill us…’ And I don’t regret it because I’ve had a lot of time with my child, time to do some of the other interests in my life. So it’s been a nice balance, but I’m ready to be working full-time. And I’d really like to make a mark film-wise because that’s where I have the most fun.”

There was even talk, at the time of her GH exit, that Brown would turn her focus entirely to directing, something she has wanted to do since childhood. “What I realized is that I have to make a living, and when you go to school, you stop. And that’s me declaring, ‘I’m not an actress anymore. I’m going to be a director.’ And a big part of me wasn’t ready to do that at this time,” she says. To that end, she just finished acting in an independent film, Heart of the Beholder, but keeps editing equipment and a camera at home. She’s constantly shooting footage and hopes to do a documentary about surgical residents while she is in New York.

Meanwhile, thanks to the recasting of her signature part with Tamara Braun, Carly continues on GH, but Brown wouldn’t know much about that. “Part of the reason I wanted to get out of there was that the story wasn’t for me- Carly turning on Sonny and the FBI thing. I didn’t believe in it, and I don’t like to do things I don’t believe in. I wasn’t interested or intrigued by that story, so I didn’t want to watch it, nor did I want to play it,” admits the actress, who has only seen her replacement once on-screen (see sidebar). “It’s not my character; it’s hers. I created that character, and that’s cool. Wherever she’s gone with it in the last three years, I have no idea. It was my choice to leave, and I’ve never wanted to go back to it. I have an open door at General Hospital. I can go back if I want, but I don’t.”

It doesn’t take long to get the feeling that Brown could do just about anything if she sets her mind to it. She’ll need that confidence to come between Jack and Carly, who are basically to ATWT what Sonny and Carly are to GH. “I really love a challenge, and it was much more exciting to me, the option of going somewhere I’ve never been, living in a city I’ve never lived in and learning from people I don’t know,” says Brown, explaining all of this on the phone from a corner in the far reaches of Brooklyn, part of the town in which she has always dreamed of living.

“I absolutely adore New York City. I wish I could stay here forever because it’s very me,” raves the actress, and it shows. The city suits her, down to her style of conversation: fast, friendly, fresh, unfiltered. Nothing seems to faze her; she knows exactly what she wants to say and how she’ll say it. She’s also in the first flushes of love and is giddy with it. “I’m in such a great mood because this is all very recent. Like a brick house fell on me, it came out of nowhere,” she gushes of the New York-based businessman she met on a blind date four days before. “I am so enamored and curious and excited and intrigued by him that it’s really cool.” It’s a heady time, but Brown knows how lucky she is. “It’s not easy being a single mom, and being young because you want to date, but you don’t want that to affect your child at all.”

She keeps that aspect of her life separate from Jordan, who is, as ever, her main focus. “She’s incredible. She’s just as bright as they get. Very musical, incredibly shy, which is interesting- the polar opposite of me in that way, but she looks like my little twin. And she’s just the bright, shining light of my life,” says Brown, who calls her parenting style somewhere between her own father (strict) and mother (lenient). Education is critical; Brown exposes her daughter to many different cultures and is hoping that Jordan will speak at least five languages one day. “I want to raise a child with a very open mind and definitely not spoiled. She’s privileged, but she shouldn’t take it for granted in my house,” explains Brown. “I want to raise her to be a great human being, above all else, and to value helping other people more than other people helping you. And whatever she wants in life, to work really hard and fight for it. That’s part of my legacy to her, being a working mom. I want Jordan to know that anything she wants she can have, but she has to work really hard for it and make sacrifices to get it. And don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t balance everything because you may not be perfect at it, but you do the best you can, and that’s the best you can do. It’s so important. Never live your life, look back and go, ‘What if?’”

Carly’s Angels

It’s a name that has practically been branded by soaps at this point, a name that says strong-willed, pot-stirring, sexy: Carly. Brown has been dreaming of the day “the two Carlys” (she and ATWT’s Maura West, whose work she always admired) could meet on-screen, but never actually imagined it would happen. “People kept calling me Carly at the Emmys. It was wild. They were like, ‘Carly! Carly!’ I’m like, ‘Are they talking to me or Maura?’” says Brown, who has plenty of praise for her new co-star.

The same goes for the other Carly, GH’s Tamara Braun. “I saw her years ago on her very first air date,” Brown remembers. “It was just an accident. I happened to have the television on, walk into the room and hear this voiceover go, ‘The part of Carly will now be played by…’ and I almost had a heart attack. They made her look just like me! It freaked me out. I couldn’t watch anymore. They lit her the same way, gave her the same makeup artist, hairdresser, haircut and my clothes. My own father goes, ‘Sarah, you’re on the cover [of a magazine].’ I’m like, ‘Dad, that’s not me!’”

Freak-out factor aside, Brown and Braun finally met at a barbecue thrown by Eva Longoria (ex-Isabella, Young and Restless) and her then-husband, Tyler Christopher (Nikolas, GH). “Eva invited me and didn’t tell me that Tamara was going to be there. I showed up, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, three years later, and here she and I are face-to-face.’ We started talking, and it was very cool. She was gracious and wonderful and I have nothing but good things to say about her.”