After taking a break from acting, Alicia Leigh Willis (ex-Courtney, GENERAL HOSPITAL) has resumed her career
Alicia Leigh Willis may be long gone from GENERAL HOSPITAL canvas, but she certainly isn’t forgotten. Whether you saw her alter ego, Courtney, as Sonny’s sister, Carly’s BFF, Spencer’s mom or Nikolas’s fiancee, you couldn’t help but love her.
‘Fans are amazing and so supportive,’ says the actress, who opted not to renew her GH contract and was subsequently killed off eight and half years ago. ‘I see their comments on [social media], and it puts a smile on my face. GH was such a big part of my life, and to know that people still remember it and talk about it is really sweet.”
MOM TIME
After putting her acting career on the back burner for a handful of years, Willis is at last back in business! “I took a few years off to stay home with my daughter,” Simone, now 2 and a half, she says ‘I keep thinking, ‘I want you to grow up and be a lawyer or a doctor.’ Then I look at her, and she’s acting out scenes in front of the mirror. She’s very theatrical, so she takes after mommy big time. I’m in trouble!”
RETURN TO THE SET
A quickie guest stint this past spring on DAYS OF OUR LIVES as Liam’s ex-wife, Debra, made Willis aware just how much she missed being in front of the camera. “It was so nice to be back to work,” she confesses. “It made me realize how much I love that part of my life, so I put out feelers again.
“I ended up getting the lead in a movie called Family Trust,” she continues. “It was amazing, but it was hard because I was juggling two different worlds – being a mom and working 12 hour days. It was a challenge, but my dad came into town and helped out. He was my ‘manny.’ He would bring Simone to the set, and she would have a ball!”
Tale From The Dark Side
Although distribution isn’t finalized, talk is that Family Trust will be a TV movie to air sometime after the first of the year. In it, Willis stars as a woman who thinks she’s dealing with early on-set of dementia. “There are twists and turns and all sorts of crazy stuff,” she says. “It was a lot of fun but really draining, because I had to go to that place of confusion and sense of hopelessness. My grandfather had Alzheimer’s, and so I saw that decline firsthand.
“I had to go to that dark place and into that whole emotional world. I got to do a lot of really emotional stuff, which doing soaps prepares you for,” she adds. “I was able to get where I had to be emotional in, like, a second. That’s thanks to my soap training!”
– Rosemary A. Rossi