Randall Edwards:
Sex on the Soaps
People Magazine, June 16, 1980
Article Provided By Wanda"Delia is self-centered, dipsy, dumb and sexy," says Randall Edwards, 25, who plays the compulsive meddler who has bed and wed both Ryan brothers on ABC's Ryan's Hope. "It's wonderful to be so selfish and get paid for it."
Of course, the role requires certain sacrifices, and not just because one recent plot line had Randall kidnapped by an amorous gorilla. When she won the role 15 months ago, Edwards moved from Santa Monica to New York on two weeks' notice, had her hair dyed a brassier blonde in curls, rises at 4:30 a.m. for a workday that can run until 7:30 p.m. "I never eat lunch," moans Edwards. "It's hard to enjoy that pace."
But Randall isn't seriously complaining about her first major TV role, which plucked her from a secretary's life in
L.A. - even though her move meant leaving her California boyfriend. "We fell in love" says Edwards. "I'm not dating here." Consequently, actor George Loros, 36, flies to New York when he can, and Edwards returns to L.A. every two months. Her one-bedroom fourth-floor walkup still looks temporary. Her few plants are all cacti (she forgets to water others) and cardboard boxes double for end tables.Born in Atlanta, Randall grew up in Cape Cod with her artist mother after her parents divorced when she was 10. Her father, a Washington D.C. solar engineer, remembers scolding Randall to "turn off that drivel" whenever she watched the soaps as a child. He now lugs a portable TV to work to watch her in Ryan's Hope. An A student, Randall finsihed high school in three years, then graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 1976.
After a summer with a Colorado stock company, she worked as a Cape Cod waitress to buy a used van for $1100. She and a girlfriend drove it to Hollywood, but the van wound up in pictures before she did - a student film-maker blew it up for a movie. About her career she says, "I knew something would happen sooner or later." It did. She failed an audtion for General Hospital, but her tape was sent to the casting directors of Ryan's Hope. On her bathroom mirror is an ego-boosting fortune cookie that remains her own best exhortation: "Nobody does it better than you do."