Colleen Zenk Pinter: 'Getting Myself Back To My Roots'

Colleen Zenk Pinter has played Barbara Ryan on AS THE WORLD TURNS since 1978. The ageless beauty has beaten oral cancer, twice, and recently returned to the front burner at ATWT making fans extremely happy. At the recent Broadway Flea Market event, she spoke with We Love Soaps about the importance of the charity to her, why she is getting back into her musical theater roots, and how she is enjoying Barbara's storyline with Henry.

We Love Soaps: You look gorgeous today! How are you?
Colleen Zink Pinter: I’m good I’m so glad to be here. I’m glad to be supporting Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS having lost so many friends in the early days before anybody knew what was really going on. I lost too many of my dear friends. I’m just so thrilled to be here to support all this, and to see so many fans! There are so many WORLD TURNS fans that have come by.

We Love Soaps: Does that surprise you after all these years?
Colleen Zink Pinter: Well, at this event I guess it does. I didn’t really expect a lot of daytime fans to show up. But fans show up with paperback copies of the old WORLD TURNS book. I didn’t even know it came out in paperback!

We Love Soaps: You are a woman with so many talents aside from just acting. You are also a bird collector, and I recall you were involved in real estate for awhile.
Colleen Zink Pinter: For about a minute. It wasn’t for me.

We Love Soaps: Do you feel it’s important to keep stretching your horizons and learning these different crafts?
Colleen Zink Pinter: I have a lot of things I do that I’m very passionate about. One of them is design and architecture. I’m really an antique collector. That has been part of my life for all of my adult life. What I’m really into now is getting myself back to my roots, back to my musical theater roots. So I’ve been working my tush off, literally, and getting myself in shape, and seeing what the future will hold. I’ve got some very very interesting things on the table.

We Love Soaps: Anything you can share with us here?
Colleen Zink Pinter: Nothing I can share with you yet but probably pretty soon. It’s been a really interesting six months for me coming out of a disastrous four months before that with my cancer coming back, and then getting healthy again. So here I am, stronger than ever.

We Love Soaps: And you are healthy now?
Colleen Zink Pinter: I am healthy.

We Love Soaps: They have teased us viewers that Barbara may get some time with Henry coming up. Anything you can share with us about that?
Colleen Zink Pinter: Indeed it looks like Barbara is going to get a little action. And it’s not just a one night thing. I’ve had so much fun, I can’t tell you. I’ve just had a ball, and I know the viewers are going to love it.