Soap star to speak at foster care conference ‘Young and the Restless’ actress a Maine native

BANGOR – A farm may seem an unlikely setting to nurture a talent in ballet, but “The Young and the Restless” actress Victoria Rowell recalls doing both during her youth in a Maine foster home.

“I started off dancing in a barn in West Lebanon, Maine, when I was feeding the animals,” Rowell said in an interview Monday. Born in Portland, Rowell spent 18 years in foster care. She says the kind foster mother with whom she lived most of that time made it possible for her to take dancing lessons in nearby New Hampshire. At 8, she got a scholarship to the Cambridge School of Ballet in Massachusetts and her skills in dance eventually gave the energetic entertainer her start in show business.

Rowell, who plays the tempestuous Drucilla Barber on the daytime television soap opera “The Young and the Restless,” will be the keynote speaker at a Bangor conference next weekend focusing on adoption and foster care issues.

Sponsored by Adoptive and Foster Families of Maine Inc., the spring conference, titled “Redefining the Plan, ‘Hand in Hand,'” is expected to draw hundreds of people April 4-5 to the Bangor Motor Inn. Speakers from Portland, Maryland and Utah will attend.

All eyes will be on Rowell on Friday, April 4, when she gives a noon speech about her foster-care experiences. Also known for her role as the wise, warm pathologist Dr. Amanda Bentley on the recently cancelled TV program, “Diagnosis Murder,” Rowell was one of six siblings thrown into foster care at a very young age.

Rowell’s early dance training resulted in a scholarship to a Boston dance center, followed by a performance as a professional ballet dancer at the American Ballet Theater in New York City, where she danced alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov. She segued into acting and has appeared in movies with comedians Eddie Murphy and Jim Carrey and actors Lloyd and Beau Bridges in addition to her regular soap opera job.

Rowell lives in Hollywood, but she tries to get back to Maine at least once a year. Often she brings her 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son.

“Maine represents an anchor for me,” she reflects. The good times she had in the Pine Tree State serve as a “stark contrast to many situations that I’ve endured and witnessed that were, at times, very bleak.

“The beauty that Maine gave me at a young age truly sustained me numerous times and it still does,” Rowell continued.

At the conference, Rowell will also talk about the value of mentoring foster children, something she does daily. More than 25,000 teenagers fall into this category, which means they basically live on their own. During the phone interview, Rowell received a call from one of them, explaining, “She needed some advice.”

The actress will speak about the mission of the Rowell Children’s Positive Plan, a 13-year-old scholarship program that funds classes and equipment for foster children pursuing dance, athletics and the arts.

Taurean Green, a Portland foster child, received a scholarship at 9 from Rowell’s organization. He trained at the Portland School of Ballet and is now a principal dancer at the Harlem School of Ballet in New York.

The needs of foster care are never far from Rowell’s mind.

“I work in foster care on a daily basis, seven days a week,” Rowell said. She currently is lobbying CBS News to allow foster children to serve as pages at $8 an hour. She was successful in getting some of the children jobs as interns on “Diagnosis Murder.”

“It’s part of who I am. I love to act, but the acting gives me a voice to call attention to foster care and adoption,” Rowell said.