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Light of Day   Soap Opera Digest October 23, 2001   Just the Facts   Birthday: May 25 Hails From: West Palm Beach, FL Fowl Fact: Once owned chickens named Tony, Orlando and Dawn OLTL Character She'd Most Like to Play (Besides Nora): Lindsay Brush With Reva: Smith's first day on THE DOCTORS was Kim Zimmer's 9ex-Nora; Reva, GUIDING LIGHT) last day. "We just laughed ourselves silly." If all had been right in the world on September 12, 2001, Hillary B. Smith (Nora, ONE LIFE TO LIVE) would have been lunching with her Soap Opera Digest interviewer, show publicist in tow, at an Upper West Side eatery.   But because all was extremely not right with the world on that day, she did something else. Trapped on the still-stunned island of Manhattan, she and co-star Laurence Lau (Sam)--who, like the rest of the OLTL cast, found themselves with free time when taping shut down the day before--walked several miles south along a Hudson River bike path. "It got to where you needed to take it out of the black box," she explains of their hike. "We passed Chelsea Piers, where the triage center was set up; there was a morgue in the ice rink. We watched firemen who had been dropped off at 14th Street [the boundary of the closed-off area], walking to Ground Zero. People were applauding and holding up signs that said, 'God Bless you, you're our heroes." They were even cheering [power company] Con Ed." By the following day--Thursday--soaps resumed taping, and Smith and Lau returned to their routine. The fantasy world of Llanview, PA; a place not far from a fantasy version of New York that had not just lost more than 6,000 people, two very tall buildings and an innocent sense of safety. It wasn't easy.   "We all felt so silly doing something as inane as a soap opera," admits Smith, who, along with husband Nip, lost six close friends. "But," she adds, "it was gratifying to learn lines and get yourself away from the television set." Executive Producer Gary Tomlin enforced the plunge into the story by insisting that TV monitors be turned off around the studio. "Not because he wanted to keep us in the dark, but because he felt it was important to focus on something other than the tragedy." And after several days of relentless reality television and 24-hour news coverage, it became safe to assert that a little fantasy was needed. "As silly as we feel being here in the midst of all this tragedy," points out Smith, "we are going to serve a purpose. People want to be mindlessly entertained. That means being engrossed in something you've created, or when you can help someone escape their reality and bring them into your reality. That's our job." Smith ought to know. She's been doing that job--mostly on, occasionally off--for nearly 20 years, through a marriage to a guy she originally met at age 14, and two pregnancies. She got her start as the feisty Kit on THE DOCTORS in 1982, moved to AS THE WORLD TURNS as the first Margo recast the following year and ended up at OLTL in 1992 in a role that still thrills her almost 10 years down the line. She's taken aback at the realization that she's now played Nora longer than any other character in her repertoire. "I got to create her," she explains. "I got to make her smart--certainly smarter than me--and I got to make her righteous, but also flawed. Flawed is the most important thing." Acting was the path Smith always steered toward, even though by the time she arrived at Sarah Lawrence College, her loyalties remained divided: "I went there because they had a program in theater and a program in human genetics. I was going to graduate with my B.A. and my master's at the same time." But genetics did not determine destiny this time around, as Smith discovered she had the interest, but not he passion, to keep up with the field. "Theater was my passion," she says. "I'm still fascinated with biology and physiology--but I'm grateful that no one has to rely on me for genetic information." She caught her acting break as a senior at Sarah Lawrence, when a school production of Song Night In The City went off-Broadway, and from there she went on to other theater and prime-time TV roles like NO SOAP, RADIO before entering daytime. "I did everything backwards," she recalls. In 1983, she wed Phillip "Nip" Smith. They'd kept in touch since they were teenagers, but only linked up romantically a year before they got hitched. Then along came Courtney in 1985 and Phillip ("Phips") in 1988.   Having a daughter who's older than Smith was when she first met Nip doesn't bother her in the least. "It's more of a concern to [Courtney[," grins Smith. "It gives her pause. I was like, 'If it hasn't hit you now, trust me, you haven't met [the right man] yet.' She goes back and forth between wanting a career as a trophy wife--which I support wholeheartedly because I'm hoping it'll support a lifestyle to which I'd like to grow accustomed--and never wanting to be married and having her own career. Her dreams are all over the map, and that's how it should be. I had real tunnel vision."   Still, that tunnel vision has landed her where she is today--with a mountain of memorable moments and, as Smith puts it, "some interesting detours." One of those detours involved an on-screen train crash last year in which Nora was presumed dead. Smith spent most of the summer in a bed on-set, kidnapped and recovering. "We hit a peak with the train wreck," she remembers. "But after that it was really dark and dismal. There were syringes and lost memories. There wasn't any light or laughter. My character got pushed in directions I didn't agree with, but my job is to say the words on the page, and say them as well as I possibly can. My job is not to come up with the stories--people need to understand that."   Fortunately, life has turned around for Nora, and Smith says she's starting to see some of the "light and laughter" that the show was missing. "We're trying to bring back the original character of Nora, not as a victim, but as a survivor," she explains.   To that end, she has welcomed a recast Sam (Lau) and opened her arms wide to re-welcome Ty Treadway (this time as Troy, not the Nora-obsessed Colin). That, says Smith, is enough to put light and laughter in anybody's day. "We feel it in the building," she says. "It's a very happy place to be now. Recently, one of our production assistants looked and me and said, "I'd pay money to be you.' I had Larry Lau [as Sam] hugging me, Ty Treadway [as Troy] looking at me with love in his eyes, Director Frank Valentini showing Larry how to hold me." She laughs a little. The fantasy holds, at least for now, "I was sitting there, going, 'You know, it's a good day to be Hillary.'"