GL's Laura Wright is gutsy, gorgeous and geared up for her most challenging role yet -- motherhood. By Mark McGarry

Not many women can look attractive while using a finger to lick up the last drop of tomato sauce from a plate of pasta. "This drives my husband crazy," Laura Wright says, actually making it look sexy. "I love doing this. He says, 'don'T you have any silverware?' It's not the same when you don't get to lick it. I'm surprised I ate that Caesar salad with a fork. I always eat my salads with my fingers. I'm a 'picky' person."

Talking with Wright is a pleasure, because there are no pretensions. She wants to give a good interview, but knows that she can do that simply by being herself. There's no mugging for the t ape recorder here. She also has an irresistible spark, which might be why she landed the coveted role of Reva's sister, Cassie Layne, on GUIDING LIGHT last July.

"It was extremely terrifying," Wright says of being cast in the role, "because Kim (Zimmer, Reva) is such a strong actress, and to play her sister there had to be some similarities -- the spunkiness and the strength. I wanted to be able to come to the table with it, and I didn't know if I could. I thought: Oh, god, I hope I don't suck. I didn't want anybody disappointed with hiring me. So I worked hard at doing the best I could."

The first six months were difficult, she says, "because there were so many storylines going on. I'm trying to seduce Billy. I'm trying to be nice to Reva but the whole time I'm doing things behind her back. I'm working with Alan. Then I see my daughter. the second Reva and Cassie found out they were sisters, I thought: Thank god! Now I can have regular soap stories.

"I love my scenes with Kim," Wright says, her eyes sparkling. "We get so many compliments. People come up to us all the time and say, 'You guys are the best sisters.'"

Wright genuinely enjoyes all of her co-stars. "When Wendy (Moniz, Dinah) and I work in scenes, anything can happen. We have to have our stuff choreographed, because if not, we'd probably rip each other's hair out." Scenes with Frank Grillo (Hart) are more improvised. "If we get a script and we're not feeling great about it, we work hard to find things to make it interesting. We throw things in. 'I'm going to touch you here,' or 'I'm going to do this here.' Once we had to play with whipped cream, and I had no idea what he was going to do. I was thinking: He's going to squirt me in the face, and I'm going to kill him! I was forgetting my lines, and he was cracking up. I know he's going to come to the table with 100 percent, and whatever I throw out he's going to catch and throw back."

What does Wright's husband, John, whom she met when she was 15 in their hometown of Clinton, Md., think of Cassie and Hart's longing glances and passionate love scenes? "He's fine. I'll come home from work and say, 'Today was great, because we taped those beach scenes.' And he says, 'You know, I don't get to roll around and kiss the people at my job. Don't tell me you had a hard day. I've been tearing down drywall' -- he's an architect -- 'and I'm dirty as hell, and you're telling me what a tough day you've had?'

"That's what's so much fun," Wright says of the Cassie/Hart attraction, "knowing that all of it is totally acting. That's where you can take it to crazy lengths. Frank and I joke around all the time, and he loves John. He calls John a saint. I'm like, 'Hey, shut up.' They'll pick on me." Wright's brother's ex-girlfriend introduced John to her. "she kept saying, 'You have to meet this guy. His name is John Wright. But I always call him Johnny Wrong because he's too young for me, so you have to meet him.' One day I was with her," the actress explains, "and we stopped in front of his house. He was sitting on a skateboard, with his friends. I just thought he was the cutest thing I had ever seen." Later, they went to an all-night skate party together, then to Denny's for breakfast. On the way home, John kissed Laura in the backseat of his friend's car.

They dated for three months, but broke up. they got back together and split up again a couple of more times over the course of the next several years. "Finally, I called him, and three weeks later we were engaged," Wright says simply. "three months later, we were married. It was meant to be. When we broke up the first time we were just kids," she elaborates (John was 16). "After that it was wrong timing. We always adored each other, but I don't think we could ever commit to anything at that young age. Our feelings were way too strong for each other. when I walked into a bar and he would be there, no one else could be in the room. that's how intense it was. If we would have gone all the way at that time in the relationship, it would have ended."

John proposed to Laura in a bar, spontaneously. "I said, 'I can't believe we're together again. I'd marry you tomorrow.' He said, 'You will? You would marry me?!'" he took the foil from her cigarette pack and wrapped it around her finger, and told everyone that night they were engaged. "he's extremely romantic. We had taken ten years to finally get together, and it was at a time in our lives when we were ready for the commitment. There was no way we were going to let it go."

they've been married for three years ("It feels like we've been together forever," Wright says), and are expecting their first child in November. "It was a little exhausting during the sixth through 10th week," she says of her pregnancy. "It was a rough time of being tired and nauseous. I also wasn't used to eating so often; you eat every couple of hours. Hunger doesn't creep up on you, either. It hits you."

Wright doesn't know how -- or if -- motherhood will change her, but it has changed her marriage. "It has brought us closer," she says. "you have something going on inside you that you made together. We think of everything now as the three of us instead of the two of us."

Maybe the reason Wright looks so good cleaning her pasta plate is because she's content, utterly happy. She has a great job, a loving husband and now a child on the way.

She's not the type to act as if life has always been a breeze, however. LOVING'S transformation into The City was difficult, she says. she played Allison "Ally" Rescott Bowman, and was one of the handful of actors to survive the massive overhaul. "You had actors who were fired for no reason," she says. "Lisa Peluso (Ava Masters, now on another World as Lila) was such a beloved character. and like an aunt or sister to me. Christine Tudor (Gwyneth Alden) -- an amazing talent -- was wasted. Nada (Rowand), who played my grandmother, Kate, boy, do I miss her. Dennis Parlato (Clay alden)...that's a very talented cast. It was very hard and sad. Then, when you're the one who's staying, you feel horrible." Survivor's guilt? "yeah. there were people who were told they were fired two weeks before their last day because they didn't want the story getting out.

"when The City was cancelled, I was exhausted," she continues. "It was such a hard show to do. We would sometimes do three or four shows a day. I could do all my shows in one day and have the rest of the week off. That wa snice, but it wasn't about the work. It was about spitting the lines out."

Wright takes acting seriously. "All through high school, I acted and directed, and loved it," she says. She wanted to continue to study acting after graduation, but her father wanted her to work at the family-owned gas station in Clinton and, ultimately, own one herself. She agreed. "That wasn't too bad. Good money. I tried to open my own gas station and get fast cash, so I could show my dad that I could put up some money. Meanwhile, there was a woman in Washington, D.C., who helped people get jobs in the entertainment industry. She's the one who got me the job on LOVING. I was put on videotape along with 20 other girls. I had a screen test, and two days later they called me and said, 'Be in New York by 5 p.m. you start work tomorrow morning.'"

Wright didn't forget about her roots. After she married, she bought a gas station. Her parents helped run it, since Wright was ensconced in the soap opera world. She ended up selling the business, however, when her parents moved.

It's hard to picture Laura Wright ever pumping gas, but you can bet she looked good doing it.

Courtesy Soap Opera Weekly