I started my career off replacing Rita Moreno in a Broadway show.

I got on the TV show at 40 and that is something very rare. So, I know that God gave me that role (on) One Life to Live - the role of Carlotta, the role of a mom.

We realized that there's a great need in many churches to use the power of the media...There are a lot of different ways to preach. You can preach by praising. You can preach by preaching sermons. You can preach by just giving someone food when they're hungry. There are people who will never darken a church door but they will come to see a play.

I gave my heart to Jesus. I accepted him as my Lord and Savior, started reading the Bible, started going to a church (and) started a relationship with Jesus.

I was doing big roles and, yeah, everything was going great. In the midst of all that, I guess I had already become common in the sense that I became formed into what the world wanted me to be. My desires and my goals were (identified) by the world - the things that would make me (successful) in the sight of the world and would give me a status that I thought was security.

I got the bad press and the blogging and the email threats because people really didn't understand. They thought I was anti-gay. That's not true at all. My spiritual mom has a gay son. Even he was telling his friends "No, that's not true. She's so accepting of me." That doesn't mean I accept his lifestyle. It means I accept him as a human person and as a creation of God and a person of value.

As I got older, the role that I ended up (playing) on One Life to Live was a mother because, by then, I had a stable marriage - so I thought - and a beautiful son and mother roles became what I was doing well. I was still the Latina mom who very much related to people who love family. All those traditional values (were) coming back into my life.