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AMC: The Kate Collins/Janet Green Appreciating Thread


Adam

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I LOVE Kate Collins and her portrayal of Janet. One of the first memories I have of AMC is the Natalie in the well storyline. She was my favorite back then, and she is again now. I'm not too optimistic about her staying on the canvas for all that much longer, but I would love it if they could find a way for Janet from another planet to stay in Pine Valley for a long while.

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She also got praise from Michael Logan in the new TV Guide, so I'll type up both :)

Performer of the Week

Kate Collins(Janet, All My Children)

When Kate Collins came out of retirement for her return to AMC last November, she observed to Digest that since her days as a Pine Valley contract player (1985-92), the acting style on daytime has become more natural and less melodramatic. "If I was doing Natalie," she said referring to her more muted, original AMC alter ego, "I might have difficulties in this day and age!"

Having fallen in love with her all over again since her Janet stormed back into town, we think Collins was selling herself short, but that's not the point: The point is the very point she was trying to make, which is that Janet is over-the-top by her very nature; it's coded into her DNA. So the issue of towned-down performances is moot.

Collins' brilliance lies in her fearless embrace of Janet's utter madness. In the hands of an actress less courageous, less assured, the gambit might not work. Only an actress of Collins' caliber, one who holds nothing back, could turn Janet into what Collins has: A compulsively watchable, undeniably original treat.

And for an actress playing a mentally imbalanced criminal, she sure can tug at our heartstrings. When Janet overheard daughter Amanda asking Myrtle if Myrt thought she was crazy "like my mom," Janet was devestated-----and we felt devestated for her, even though moments earlier Janet had been pumping laughing gas into the truck in which she was holding Krystle, Adam, Opal, Joe and Brooke hostage, which is pretty incontrovertible proof of her craziness. When she asked Amanda point-blank, "Are you ashamed of me?", her voice tug-of-warring between hope that Amanda would say no and fear that she would say yes, we saw not an off-her-rocker cartoon villian, but a mom who fiercely loves her daughter---and fiercely depends on her daughter's love for her.

It can't be long before Janet's crimes catch up with her and Collins leaves the canvas, but until then, we'll be loving every moment of her scenery-chewing screen time.

***********************************

This is from the Logan Rave in TV Guide:

I'm guessing that Kate Colins, the daughter of Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, was raised to think big and fly high. Because that's what she's doing as crackpot villian Janet Green on All My Children. This is an outrageously hammy yet skilled performance, reminiscent of Meryl Streep's great, goofy work in "She-Devil" and "Death Becomes Her." Like Streep, Collins knows how to teeter on the brink of unacceptable shtick without ever taking the plunge. Ther is much method to this madness.

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