Colleen Zenk Pinter
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Colleen Zenk Pinter (born January 20, 1953 in Barrington, Illinois) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as the beleaguered fashionista turned crazy criminal Barbara Ryan on As the World Turns, a role she began playing on the show in September 1978.
For most of her time on the show, her character, Barbara, has been harassed by her criminal ex-husband, James Stenbeck (played by Anthony Herrera). For much of the time, Barbara was a beleaguered heroine who faced one trial and tribulation after another. However, in 2000, the writers took the character in a drastically different direction after the character suffered burns in a fire (as well as deceit by then-husband Craig Montgomery). As a result, the character became a villainess. Viewers were impressed that Pinter, who so consistently played the heroine, was so believable as a villianess, and so were critics; she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 2002.
As a long-running player on the show, Pinter was prominently featured during the show's 50th anniversary episode in April 2006.
Trivia
Her character is so popular on the show that Tyson Foods asked for her to appear in commercials spoofing her character and her devious behaviors. In the advert, Barbara is in her kitchen, talking on the phone with her friend about her day; she splices in mundane motherly things with the horrible pain her character has inflicted on others, and in a cheery tone, she asks her friend how her day was.
She is married to fellow soap actor Mark Pinter, whom she met onset at ATWT. Both of them were married at the time to others, which caused at least one ATWT actress (now on another soap) to bitterly feud with Zenk Pinter over the relationship.
The Pinters have been married since 1987, have six children together (including a daughter, Georgia) and live in Wilton CT.
In November 2005, the couple starred as Dolly and Horace in a production of "Hello Dolly!" at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania.