Meet the newest member of the cast as she steps into the role of Eden!

Soap Opera Fan Blog recently had the opportunity to speak to the actress who has been recast in the role of Eden Garick on The Young and the Restless. She is a talented, intelligent, and ambitious young woman, with a good sense of humor, who has a good handle on her new character!  Vanessa Marano is known for her work in Primetime (she played April on Gilmore Girls), and in films, but as she is new to Daytime audiences, we were happy to get the chance to get to know the actress who will soon be gracing our screens as Eden!

Soap Opera Fan Blog: Tell us about yourself and how you got into acting.

Vanessa: I’m 16 years old, and I first started asking to act at about age 6, but my mom didn’t want me to do it. She wanted me to have basically, a normal childhood, because this is a hard business – there’s a lot of rejection! But I persisted and continued to beg her for two years.  My mom has a theater, and she teaches acting classes, does children’s plays, and teaches teenage improv.  So I had started taking acting classes with my mom and doing plays – which fueled the fire! Finally, when I was 8 she took me to an agency – an agency that she had looked up, and found out that they turned a lot of people down! That was my mom’s goal, is that I would go, they would turn me down, and she would say, “See, see. When you’re eighteen you can go and revisit it if you really, really want to.” But the agent took me – and the agent took my little sister, and my sister and I have been acting ever since.

Soap Opera Fan Blog: Are you in school? How do you manage that along with work?

Vanessa: Actually, I’ve graduated and I’m going to college right now. I was home-schooled and then went through an accelerated program. It’s extremely difficult keeping up with school and work, especially with college classes. A lot of the professors want you to be in every class, so just scheduling classes around working is really hard. But it’s working out so far, I’ve had to drop a few classes [Candace notes that a lot of celebrities seem to have persevered and made it through college while working]. It’s pretty impressive. It takes a long time though. It will take a long time to do the whole thing.

Soap Opera Fan Blog: What do you like to do when you have time off?

Vanessa: [laughs] I don’t really have time off! But if I do, I’m a homebody, and I’ll be home watching television or sleeping. I am at the theater a lot, and that’s kind of my ‘thing’, really.  I’m either working, at school, or I’m at my mom’s theater.

Soap Opera Fan Blog: Who inspires you in the acting world?

Vanessa: I love Helen Mirren. [laughs] I love her so much! There’s so many, it’s really hard to choose, it really is, and I think a lot of people get asked that question, and it’s really restricting when you think about it. There are so many actors and actresses out there that no one’s heard of too. There’s so many talented people who never get their kudos and never get famous. So it’s a difficult question to answer because there’s so many.

Soap Opera Fan Blog: What other roles do you have in the works besides Y&R?

Vanessa: I just did an independent film called ‘Dear Lemon Lima”, directed by Suzi Yoonessi, and she made the film originally as a short film and then she raised enough money, and we just finished the film wrapping in August, and now she’s trying to get it into the Sundance Film Festival!  It’s about a girl from Alaska – not me – she’s half-Eskimo. It’s an underdog story, sort of, she gets into a school on a scholarship, because she’s half-Eskimo, but when she gets to the school, her boyfriend, who’s a complete jerk, is just making things extremely difficult for her and she doesn’t have any friends and whatnot. So, it’s a very athletic-oriented school and she ends up being demoted in P.E. and has to go in the weight room with all the freaks! I’m one of the freaks – I’m the head freak! [laughs] My character is a pathological liar. So, what happens is, she’s at the school for a while and it’s very difficult for her, and because she’s on a scholarship, she ends up being picked as a Team Captain for the school’s recreation of the Eskimo Olympics. So, she ends up picking, for her team, not the really athletic kids, but all the freaks. Everyone’s shocked, because these kids are not athletic at all – I’m not athletic at all, so it wasn’t that big of a stretch in that sense – and they end up winning, but there’s a lot more to the story too. I’m also working on, for TNT the new Eric McCormack [Will & Grace] sitcom called “Trust Me,” and I play Eric’s daughter.

This interview is continued on our sister site, Soaps.com! Visit there and read to find out how Vanessa got the role of Eden, what her perception is of the character, and a sneak peek of what’s ahead!

Photo courtesy: childstarlets