HIGHLAND — Anne Sward Hansen has always been passionate.
Whether it's in her role as gutsy head nurse Lyla Montgomery Peretti on the daytime drama "As the World Turns" or as a frontline activist trying to stop urban sprawl, she's not afraid to fight.
She speaks up. She centers on fine detail and she doesn't give up.
"The first time I saw a kid toss a kitten down a storm drain, this shy little girl became an activist," Hansen said, looking reflectively out the window of her Utah County home. "I had to say something."
She figures she was about 6 years old then, not sure what she'd become but certain that she'd do something about injustices.
Today, years later — a true actress never tells her age — Hansen is attempting to manage two full-time careers, that of a stage, screen and television star and that of a full-fledged activist.
She's trying to help her American Indian friends keep what she believes is dangerous nuclear waste off reservation land. She's working to ensure funding for tribal colleges. She's fighting a local development that will put a road right next to her home.
As president of the Screen Actors Guild in Utah, she's trying to resolve what she sees as inequities in right-to-work states like Utah — inequities that she claims restrict contract actors from working while non-union actors enjoy union benefits.
She's been at the forefront of battles to keep gravel pits out of Utah County communities and to curb cutting up open space into housing developments. She's worked to save manatees in Florida and to rescue wild animals kept as pets in southern California.
"I've gone broke doing this, but I do all this because I love this country and I believe in democracy," Hansen said. "For me, it is just immoral not to do something. With the Native Americans, I know that a lot of Goshute lives are at stake."
Sometimes, she admits, the stress of trying to keep a hand in both worlds is high, especially when she's also a wife and a mother and an LDS celebrity in a Hollywood world.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Hansen came to Utah after she met and married a man who came from a pioneer-stock LDS family. She was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New York in 1981, one year before she joined the daytime drama, where she was a regular cast member and singing star from 1981 to 1995.
On the show, her character, Lyla Montgomery, came to the fictional city of Oakdale with two children, one the illegitimate daughter of Dr. John Dixon. She fell in love with Dr. Bob Hughes — but, true to soap-opera form, the relationship was doomed — and she finally married a much younger man on the show, Dr. Casey Peretti.
Peretti, of course, died of a rare and incurable illness, but not before Lyla became pregnant with baby Katie.
The baby was actually Hansen's real-life child.
Hansen received special permission to bring the baby to the set and onto the show, where she played the part of Katie for six years.
Hansen said while soaps are filled with scandal-ridden stories, during the time she played the colorful matriarch of the Montgomery clan, storylines centered more on family issues and less on sensationalistic plotlines.
She was generally comfortable with her character, although being LDS sometimes complicated things on the set.
"Oh, it was extremely difficult," she said. "I'd come to a honeymoon scene or something in the script and I'd have to say, 'Oh, I can't do this.' To the producers' credit, when I was there, they were very understanding."
Hansen still frequents Los Angeles and New York to do movie and television work but generally shies away from the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry.
"I really have no status," Hansen says without guile. "People generally don't know (I'm an actress), and I don't use it. A lot of people think I'm an attorney."
That could be because Hansen — when taking the role of a social-issue advocate — is articulate when she's making her case. And Hansen knows she can command an audience.
Lyla Montgomery Peretti is now a recurring character on "As the World Turns," which takes Hansen back to the show every 12 to 18 months, most recently on the Christmas 2000 show, where she asked her stage daughter's illegal alien husband not to break her heart.
Hansen is bemused when people refer to her as "Lyla Montgomery." Although she keeps track of cast members, she says she rarely watches the show.
"I didn't even know Bob (Hughes) was in a coma," she said, laughing. "I'd better call him."
E-mail: haddoc@desnews.com