«I was the star of Santa Barbara. I left everything the day I met God.»
By Céline Chaudeau, Closer, 2008	Home   Cette page en Français

She starts with a long sigh. Marcy Walker is used to be remembered her televisual past. But she has humour, too. "Eden Capwell is always well alive in Ukraine and in Romania, she jokes. Santa Barbara is still aired over there." She will however avoid going to Kiev or Bucharest in the next months. Without too many difficulties. "I am awaited at my job every day, at 10 a.m. precise..." No camera at the horizon, however. At 45 years old, Marcy Walker preaches with children in a community church in Lake Forest Community, North Carolina. "We have several lives. My new career is more spiritual. And more resting, also..."

Just remind you. In a former life, between 1984 and 1993, she did not really rest. On the heights of Santa Barbara, Eden Capwell lived a long upset love story (with Cruz Castillo) and married malicious Kirk Cranston (who will try to drown her). Among other adventures, she was accused of a murder she didn’t commit. After having suffered of serious split personality, she even played the dead one. And she resuscitated of course. Marcy Walker still smiles about it : "The problem with this kind of show, she entrusts to Closer, is that the storylines never get exhausted. Even when you die, the writers are able to make you reappear."

After the airing of the last episode of Santa Barbara, in 1993, she continues for ten years with All my Children, another American soap-opera. "At one moment, I needed to find a certain authenticity. Here, I’m filled with wonder to discover drivers who stop to let pass the pedestrians or people who really take time to know each other." Her change of life started gradually, after the birth of her son Taylor, in 1989. "When he began elementary school, I implied myself within my parish. Little by little, I became one of these unbearable voluntary of whom nobody is able to get rid of ! I ended thinking that this vocation would fill me more than television."

By raising her son, Marcy rediscovered God. "I was not raised in a family particularly believing. I renew with spirituality with adulthood, at one time when I was a single mother. The Bible helped me to cross many ordeals, to assume my defects. Naturally, afterwards, I wanted to more help people." Marcy passes a stage by marrying Doug Smith, in 1999. With her fourth husband - and she hopes it, the last one - she aspires to more peace.

To find a relative anonymity, she adopts, in her work, her name as a married woman. In 2006, under the name of Marcy Smith, she answers an employment offer published by the church of Lake Forest Community. "They were looking for a director of studies for the department devoted to the children. We were sixty to postulate, whose majority had studied theology. Finally, I get hired for my enthusiasm." Marcy sees passing five hundred children by week, with whom she reads biblical texts or direct theatre plays. "For the little ones, I am a youth leader like the others. The parents sometimes ask me questions. I answer them without problem. I think back with tenderness of Santa Barbara, but without regrets." There are questions that she will never escape (the answer is : no, she did not keep contact with Cruz Castillo, sorry). This is life. Well, her former life. She aspires today to more spiritual questions...