Heather Tom Celebrates 35 Years in Soaps, and Explains Why She Turned Down Yale and Juilliard to Continue Her Run (Exclusive)

Heather Tom didn’t think she landed the role of Victoria Newman when she auditioned for The Young and the Restless in 1990. 

“I had been working in the business since I was born basically, and so it was just another audition,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. She auditioned for William J. Bell, who co-created the series with wife Lee Phillip Bell.

“He said, ‘Thank you for coming in,’ which is the worst thing anyone can ever say to you. It basically means, ‘Thanks for wasting your time and mine,’ ” she remembers. “And so I was just like, ‘Oh, okay, well, I didn’t get that.’ ”

But soon she got a phone call that — without any other auditions — she’d booked the role. “Apparently what he said was like, ‘Okay, well, that’s my Victoria,’ and that was it. . . . He had very specific things that he had in mind, and once he was there, he was there.” His “Thanks for coming in,” meant that he didn’t need to see anyone else. 

Tom was just 15 when she joined the series as the ruthless daughter of Eric Braeden’s Victor Newman. She ultimately won two Daytime Emmys for the role. She stayed with the series until 2003, when she left for One Life to Live, where she played Kelly Cramer. She stayed there until 2006, when she joined The Bold and the Beautiful, where she’s played Katie Logan (and has won four more Emmys, tying her for most wins by an actress). This fall, she celebrates 35 years of working in daytime drama.

“It’s kind of crazy,” she says about the milestone. “It’s amazing to think that I’ve been doing this for so long and consistently for so long. I am so grateful.” 

Tom notes that on B&B, she works with creator Brad Bell, the son of William. She also has branched out into writing and directing for the series. “ It is mind-blowing, to be honest, to say that I’ve been working consistently as an actress, and now as a director and a writer, for so long,” she says. 

Tom explains that she decided to go to One Life to Live so that she could move to New York, where it was filmed. “I always wanted to go to conservatory,” she says, and had actually been accepted into programs at Juilliard and Yale. She didn’t go “because I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of not having a job. I’d had a job since I was 12.”

So instead, to fulfill her “deep, deep need to study,” she booked the job on OLTL and outside of work, took classes with all the teachers she had wanted to study with. “I just put together my own curriculum, and I was lucky to do it with a gig because the only way to live in New York is with a gig.”

“I loved being on One Life to Live,” she says. “It was such a fun role. It was such a departure from Victoria. Kelly was nothing like Victoria.” She relished being a “Kramer girl” and playing a “fun, blonde, ditzy woman” with her heart on her sleeve. 

When her storyline ended in 2006, she says, “I went back to LA with a different person, a different actress, a different artist. It was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Once she was settled back in L.A., Brad called her to ask her to join B&B as Katie. She told him, “Why don’t we just do it for six months and see how it works?”

It worked. “I’ve now been here for 18 years, which is crazy. It’s like the daytime vortex. You get on one of these shows, and you think like, ‘Oh, I’ll do this for a couple of years,’ and then suddenly you blink and it’s 35 years later. You go like, ‘How did this happen?’ ”

“It happens really easily because it’s a good gig. It’s like the best gig ever,” she says.

Though soap opera plots can sometimes be a bit over-the-top, Tom says, “I’m always willing to buy into whatever. I think that especially on B&B, we like to be a little extra. I find that to be a fun challenge as an actor, and as a writer and a director too, to take this stuff that’s just so crazy and go like, All right, well, let’s find the joy in that. Let’s find the humor in that. Let’s find the juicy in there because that’s what people want to watch our shows for. They want the juicy.”

But still, as a director, her job is “find those moments that ground the material in something real and true and honest.” 

“I feel like that’s just true no matter what genre you’re in, but especially with this genre.”

The Bold and the Beautiful airs weekdays on CBS and streams the next day on Paramount+.