Colleen Zenk Pinter - Daytime Career

Daytime Career

Colleen Zenk is best known for her role as fashionista-heroine-turned-evil-bitch-cougar-mother-from-hell Barbara Ryan on the daytime drama As the World Turns, a role she began portraying in September 1978 until the show left the air in September 2010.

For much of Zenk's run on the show, her character, Barbara, was tormented by her criminal ex-husband, James Stenbeck (played by Anthony Herrera). For a brief period in the mid-1980s, the character of Barbara was taken in a different direction by head-writer, Douglas Marland, and became a romantic vixen. But for the most part, Barbara was a beleaguered heroine who faced one trial and tribulation after another. In 2001, then head-writer Hogan Sheffer took the character in a drastically different direction after the character suffered burns in a fire which destroyed her face (and more deception by then-husband Craig Montgomery). As a result, the character descended into hell and she became the show's villainess.

Sheffer was quoted in an 2006 interview in a cover-feature article in The New Yorker that he wanted to give Zenk, who he felt was an "under-utilized gem of an actress", more to do than just pour coffee with children underfoot. Viewers were impressed that Zenk, who so consistently played the put-upon heroine, was so believable as a villainess, and so were critics; she was nominated for a Lead Actress Daytime Emmy Award in 2001 and 2002. She was named Best Villain by Soap Opera Digest in 2003. In 2011, she was nominated for a third time for a Daytime Emmy in the Outstanding Lead Actress category.

As a veteran diva on the show, Zenk was prominently featured in the show's special 50th anniversary episode "Seven Divas on a Bus" in April 2006, and also in the "special" comedy episodes over the years.

Zenk remained the show's women-you-love-to-hate-yet-really-love in the show's last years. Her character, Barbara, finally finding happiness and marrying for the 9th time as the show came to an end in September 2010.