Judith Light: The First Time I Quit a Big Job

The first and only time I ever quit a job was in 1982, when I decided to leave “One Life to Live,” the soap opera that I had worked on for five years.

Now, I had once sworn I would never do a soap. That’s what I told my parents as I sat on their couch in Yonkers, after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and doing more than four years of repertory theater.

As far as I was concerned, the only kind of career that an actress should want was in feature films and theater. Not only was I clueless about how challenging the work on soap operas could be, I thought I was above it. I would soon learn some powerful lessons.

I was at a very low point in my life and career. My unemployment benefits were running out and I was pretty close to broke. I knew I wanted to make a difference, but I wasn’t sure how that was going to happen. I even thought of getting out of the business and trying something new.

Then I got a call from my agents to be an understudy on “One Life to Live” for a day. I never did go on camera, but the producers asked me to come back and audition for the actual role itself, of Karen Wolek. I got it. And despite my earlier protestations, I took the job, thinking it would give me some time and a cushion of money to think about what I really wanted to do.

The writers asked me if I knew the film “Belle de Jour” starring Catherine Deneuve. “I love it!” I told them. They wanted to create a similar story line on the soap: A woman married to a very wealthy man is a prostitute on the side. So Karen became the wife of a good doctor, but was forced into selling her body in secret by an old lover.

Day after day there were emotional scenes filled with tension and terror as my character tried to escape her double life, navigate a web of lies and deal with brutal johns. The story line went on for a year and a half, culminating in a powerful scene on the witness stand that led to my first Emmy.

I remember that awards day so distinctly. Sammy Davis Jr. had appeared on the show and we had done several scenes together. Just before they announced my category, he came up behind me and whispered in my ear, “You’re gonna get this.”

However, most important, was that on “One Life to Live,” I met the man who would become my husband.

Robert Desiderio played Steve Piermont, one of the gangsters from my character’s underworld. The producers and writers saw real chemistry between us, and they started writing for it. Robert was only on the show for a short time before leaving to work in Los Angeles, but our relationship had already been cemented on screen and off.

So as my five-year anniversary on the soap approached, Robert said he thought it was a good time for me to leave, that I should move to Los Angeles too.

“What!” “Why?” I exclaimed, frantic and filled with fear at the thought. He simply said, “I think you will work out there.”

So on a gorgeous fall day in September, my hand was shaking as I sat in the producer’s office, terrified that by signing an exit contract I was jumping off a cliff. Voices in my head were saying, “What do you think you’re doing?” “This is a huge, stupid mistake!”

After all, I was doing exciting creative work and living in New York, my favorite city in the world. The writers and directors were fabulous, the cast had become my family and the fans were incredibly supportive.

The idea of leaving what was a success on so many levels was anathema to me. My agents and managers agreed with my husband that leaving for Los Angeles was a good, ambitious idea.

Somewhere deep in my heart, I knew they were all correct; I had to take the chance. And beneath all the terror, I could feel a tiny glimmer of excitement. I moved.

The first work I got there was a movie-of-the-week about herpes.

Then, after a guest spot on “St. Elsewhere,” I didn’t work again for almost seven months.

The voices returned with a vengeance: “We told you this was a bad idea!” “How could you be so foolish?”

I hung in there and in September 1983, almost a year to the day I left the soap, I auditioned for a show called “You’re the Boss.” It eventually became “Who’s the Boss?” and it ran for eight seasons.

My husband was right; I did work. There were more movies-of-the-week and more television series. And then came a stunning piece of advice from my manager Herb Hamsher, who died last October. He suggested I go back to the theater. I had not been onstage for 22 years and again I was terrified. Once again, I listened to wisdom more powerful than my fear and returned to New York.

What followed was a fulfilling theater, television and film career, and a life that I could never have imagined that day I left “One Life to Live.”

I still have to remind myself sometimes that fear never needs to control my choices. Something powerful rises up in me whenever I put the fear aside and move ahead in spite of it.