Tina Sloan: Acting the Part
Best known as nurse Lillian Raines on CBS's daytime drama Guiding Light, Tina Sloan is also known for her advocacy of breast cancer awareness.
It all started in 1992, when the producers of Guiding Light developed a storyline giving Tina's character breast cancer. Letters poured in from viewers who were inspired as they watched her character cope with the disease. While not a breast cancer survivor herself, Tina was so touched by the experience that she decided to become more involved in the cause. She has spent the past 10 years raising breast cancer awareness, traveling the world and collecting awards for her advocacy. ThirdAge spoke with her recently about how the role has impacted her life.
TA: Confronting breast cancer on television was a bold decision back in 1992. Why did the producers of Guiding Light develop a breast cancer storyline?
TS: Kathy Chambers, who had been our producer, died of breast cancer about a year before, and the storyline was a tribute to her. She died quite quickly, maybe within a year or two of when it was detected. She was a lovely woman and this was a way to show the world that this goes on and that there is a real vulnerability. I think it was the first TV show that dealt with breast cancer, and really spent six months on it. My character wouldn't tell anybody, even her daughter. She was sort of ashamed of it, thought it would go away, and didn't want people to treat her differently. I think a lot of women feel this way. They think that men won't still love them, that their children will worry. I got a lot of letters from women saying "I was able to cry for you, but I was not able to cry for myself," which broke my heart. They would say, "I was too busy cooking dinner for the kids, pretending everything was fine for everybody, to really deal what was going on, but I finally was able to cry for myself by crying for you" (Tina's character).
TA: Where you surprised by the response to your portrayal of a breast cancer survivor?
TS: Oh yes, it was astounding. Memorial Sloan-Kettering (Cancer Center) and the American Cancer Society got very involved and we did little speeches at the beginning and end of most shows telling people to please get mammograms, to please check themselves. We were reaching about 10 million people a day who could see this and be touched by it. The agencies said they had a real outpouring of people who contacted them as a result.
TA: You've said you received quite a number of letters. Is there one letter or one story in particular that touched you in a special way?
TS: Well, certainly that woman that said, "I cried for myself, finally, by crying for you." There were some from young women, who found lumps and went to their doctors and their doctors said "don't be ridiculous," so then they wrote me. I wrote them back and told them to go to another doctor. And they said, "thank you, I was cancerous." I also got letters from people who said, "You saved my life, you saved my life. Because of you, I had this gnawing suspicion, I went and got a mammogram, I had it taken out." That was the thing that made me feel wonderful. And there would be people who would call me before they were going to be operated on for a double mastectomy (in those days there weren't so many removals of lumps--it was more mastectomies). They would say "I'm going in and do you have any words of wisdom?" Well you know, my words of wisdom were "thank God you found it and you're getting it taken care of and I'll pray for you." There's not much you could do.
TA: A personal question: Have you ever had a scare?
TS: Yeah, right during this time [while Tina was portraying a breast cancer survivor]. And I thought: "Isn't that interesting, what an actress can do!"
TA: How did you feel?
TS:I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified because I thought I brought it on and indeed it was benign. But I thought, "I can't believe I've done this to myself, that I was able to bring on a lump, so I could really play this part correctly." I remember my doctor calling me and saying, "I have good news and bad news." And I said, "well what's the bad news?" He said, "You won't be able to play your part well... You're fine, you're fine." I think the waiting was very hard, too. Women have to wait and think--that's an awfully hard thing to do, not knowing.
TA: What would you say to the friends or husbands of women who won't get checked for breast cancer? What advice do you have for them?
TS: I think that happens a lot. There are people who are too afraid to go. You can't force them, but you can say "If you love me enough, you'll go. I'll go with you." If it was somebody I loved, I might make the appointment and say we're going and I'm taking you and literally go in there and sit with them. Maybe it would make it less scary if somebody went with them and took care of all the little minutiae of the day--getting the babysitter to take care of the kids, making dinner for them that night--so they didn't have to worry about anything. People cop out, we all do--"I have to do dinner, I have to get the kids." They forget what's most important--their health--or they won't be here to make dinner!
TA: Thank you for your time.
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by Stephen Warley, ThirdAge Staff
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