Daytime TV's Guiding Lights

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"She is always praying for me and everyone on the show," says Julianne, who was on The Young and the Restless before she made her debut on Days of Our Lives.

Julianne was raised in Windermere, Florida, near Orlando, and her father is Christian writer and former evangelist Max Morris. She grew up attending Pentecostal churches and is now active at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, where several ministries directed specifically at the entertainment industry are based.

"I am a Christian first and then an actor," says Julianne, who has been active in overseas missions trips when not acting. "I feel this is the door God has opened. This is where He wants me."

Julianne was a child actor and attended drama school in New York City before moving to California. Before breaking into Days she was cast in the lead of a South African TV series titled Sinbad.

Christian actors often talk about what lines they can cross in their roles, and Julianne discovered hers when she was asked to lead a seance in an episode of Sinbad.

"I read the script the night before and started crying. I just didn't know how I could do it," she says. "[The next day] I walked off the set and went back to my dressing room. I wasn't a diva or anything, but [shooting the scene] went against every single fiber in me."

During five months of filming, Julianne had been a vibrant, kind presence on the set, befriending and helping co-stars and crew members.

"I had let my light shine," she says. "So when it came to the seance, and I could not do it, they were nice about it.

"Sometimes we find ourselves doing what maybe wasn't part of God's original plan or what God really wanted us to do. But even in the midst of that it is amazing how He's so gracious to stand by us and, like Scripture says in Romans 8:28, 'All things work together for good to those that love the Lord, to those who are called according to His purpose.'"

Julianne also says abstinence is one role she won't negotiate. Her first role in a daytime soap was as a 16-year-old on The Young and the Restless. The storyline took a turn that challenged her faith as a Christian. It called for her character to lose her virginity.

"I was mortified," Julianne says. "That is such a horrible message." She tried to reason with the producers and writers.

"I did not go in like a bull in a china shop. I tried to be humble and kind and loving and backed it with facts [about teen pregnancy]."

But the producers had their way, and her character was unable to remain a virgin.

"They were very nice about it and agreed to add several scenes--several days of me just crying and saying [it] was the biggest mistake I'd ever made, that I wanted to wait until I was married and that I wish I had waited.

"But there are a lot of situations where girls lose their virginity and then realize they made a big mistake," Julianne adds. "So there was a message in it."

Julianne, who is single, strongly advocates sexual abstinence before marriage. "I am waiting. It is not always easy, but it is the right thing to do," she says.

The Days star has a message for all singles, especially teens. "I believe marriage is ordained by God," she says. "The Bible teaches quite explicitly that the romantic attachment between a husband and a wife is a parallel to our relationship to God. There could be no stronger indication of its importance.

"The idea of waiting until you are married to have sex is simply an acknowledgment of the power of sex and its unique status. Christians understand exactly how exalted and life-changing it is, which is why we don't advocate treating it as cavalierly as getting a manicure."

Julianne has not had any significant problems with her character, Greta Von Amburg, on Days of Our Lives. But she, like most Christians interviewed for this article, would not take God's name in vain or act in a sex scene.

"Sure, a lot of myself comes out [in Greta]," says Julianne, who is leaving the show this spring to pursue prime-time roles. "She is so sweet, but there are lots of choices Greta would make that are different than mine. That is what acting is. I hope I would be a little smarter about men."

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