Less than 10 minutes after Kristian Alfonso (Hope Brady/Gina von Amburg) completes her scenes on the Days of Our Lives set in Burbank, Calif., the f-words start flying. Not to worry, however. The strikingly beautiful Alfonso isn't throwing one of those daytime-diva tantrums because she didn't get her way. It's just that the self-avowed simple girl from Brockton, Mass., begins and ends almost every thought with a reference to her family.
Parents Gino and Joanne, older sister Lisa and Alfonso's 8-year-old son, Gino, are her world. They, along with a select group of loyal girlfriends, have helped sustain her through divorce, her comings and goings at Days, the challenges of single motherhood and a plethora of other issues that the very private Alfonso declines to talk about.
"I come from an amazing family," Alfonso says, as she settles into her dressing room chair. "They are an incredible, nurturing and supportive family. We are all very close and talk to each other every single day. They are my Rock of Gibraltar."
Those frequent cross-country calls to Brockton probably not only help Alfonso sort through some of the complexities of her personal life but the lives of her multiple characters as well. Alfonso has been through so much drama as Hope, Princess Gina, and Gina pretending to be Hope that some days she just doesn't know who the hell she is.
"I'll walk into a room and I'll be Gina, and then someone will come in and I'll be Hope," she says. "Then I'm talking Gina and then I'm talking . . . It's confusing, but I'm having a lot of fun with it now. I was extrememly stressed about it when it all started to transpire, because there were a lot of things that were very confusing to me and I didn't understand why this was happening and why that was happening. It was also hard to find my ground, because time is so against me. But this is just the beginning. We haven't even gotten to the tip of the iceberg."
Alfonso's trek to the top actually began on ice -- as a figure skater. She started when she was 4, and by 13 was a gold medal-winner at the Junior Olympics. Her ice princess career was cut short when she broke her leg in five places in a sledding accident. "I'm still accident-prone," she says with a laugh. "I trip a lot for some reason. I can always see what is happening around me without looking, but I'll still trip. Fortunately, I can always find my ground without going completely all the way down. My ability to stay on my feet is probably from my ice-skating days."
Shortly after winning the gold medal, Alfonso was signed by the Wilhelmina modeling agency. By the time she was 15, her face had graced the covers of more than 30 magazines, including Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. A year later, a casting agent saw one of those covers and cast Alfonso opposite Rock Hudson in the television movie Starmaker. That led to Days, where she has played Hope on and off for the past 16 years.
The show has "never gotten stale for me," Alfonso says. I've never not wanted to get up and come to work. Some mornings I may have moved a little slower because I'm a little tired, but I thank God every day I have a job here. It's a great company, a great family. It's a feel-good place. A lot of times you hear people complain about their jobs, but I'd rather complain that I have a great job and I'm working so hard than complain because I'm not doing anything. I'm much better being a productive person -- much happier feeling a sense of accomplishment, that I've done something that day. Even when sometimes I have too many days off, I can't wait to get back to work."
One of the reasons, Alfonso believes, is that the material and character just keep getting better. While the characters have matured over the years, "I do not think Bo and Hope have lost their inner child -- their sense of fun and ability to laugh at themselves," she says. "They love to be in the thick of it. Peter (Reckell; Bo) and I try to find the nuances. We love the oneupmanship, and we can really go at it. Hope is probably one of the best characters I've ever played. I hold her very close to my heart, because she's one of the first characters I've really ever developed. And I've been very lucky to always be invloved in an interesting storyline."
During her two hiatuses from Days, Alfonso kept herself busy by building up her resume with recurring roles [sic] on Falcon Crest and Melrose Place (as Pilar Ortega and Lauren Etheridge, respectively) and a slew of TV-movies.
Though her Days contract is up next year, Alfonso hasn't really thought about whether she'll stay. "Never say never," she says. "The first time I left, I didn't leave because I was unhappy, I left because I was really tired and it was a transitional period. I was only supposed to be here for three years and I was invited to stay another year. I left and did Falcon Crest after some time off to rejuvenate, but I don't need that much time to rejuvenate. I love work, no matter what. The second time I came back I was only supposed to do 13 weeks to wrap up a storyline. And this time they were bringing Peter back and it was a great story. Every time, my decisions [to come back] were driven by story."
Still, family remains Alfonso's No. 1 priority. Gino, named for his maternal grandfather, is the light of his mom's life. Alfonso admits it's challenging being a single mother, "but I have to say it's more rewarding than challenging. He's a great kid. I know he's my kid and everything, but he's still my little buddy. Sometimes we'll be talking and he'll say, 'Mom, you just don't understand what I'm saying.' I'll say, I can if you explain it to me. To see this little person looking at me saying I don't understand -- I love that. I love that he can communicate, because I want to understand and I want him to feel that he can talk to me about anything, good or bad.
"I see a lot of myself in him. He does things I did as a child, and people say we have the same facial expressions. Actually, it's funny, because when people see my sister with him, they say she must have given birth to him, because he's so much like her, too. He has her sense of humor. I try to instill the same values in him and give him the same unconditional love that my family continues to give me. But I also want him to experience the knocks and bruises of life, so when they do happen he won't be completely shocked. He'll have the strength
to pull himself back up.
"I stumble and fall, but thanks to my family and the resolve they instilled in me, I pull myself back up. I've actually had a great life. I have nothing to complain about. My father always says, don't sweat the small stuff, and that's really true. The older you get, the more you realize that most obstacles are just inconveniences. Don't let it bother you. Take a deep breath."
While she declines to comment on any moonlighting opportunities she might be exploring, in terms of romance, Alfonso hopes to tie the knot again one day. "It's not a priority right now, though. I'm very happy with my life. Would I like to have more children? Maybe. It all depends on if I meet that special person. There's a lot of dynamics involved. I would love to experience the same kind of unselfish and loving relationship my parents have. I know it exists, I just have to find the right guy."