‘LOVING’ ACTRESS ISN’T SHY ON--OR OFF--THE SET

Lauren Marie Taylor (Stacey on “Loving”) calls herself a militant housewife.

“You have to be,” she says, “when you do a soap for 10 years, have three children, and a husband who asks what’s for dinner when you walk in the door.”

Taylor says her husband, John Didrikson, a musician, is also a militant husband.

“When he asks what’s for dinner he knows my answer--the sandwich you’re going to make for yourself. We work as a couple because we both love to joke; we love our children and we know everything takes work.”

On the set where her character spent years being the “good girl,” Taylor was known for anything but a “good girl sense of humor.”

“Sometimes I marvel at my mouth,” says Taylor, who has a stream of biting banter that leaves all in earshot laughing. “Have I gone too far?” she asks after talking about a scene in which she revealed more of her anatomy than she cared to. “They wanted me to do this hot love scene in such a short outfit I knew my bum would show. I kept telling them on the set, but they wouldn’t listen. They shot the scene, it went well and, yes, it showed,” she squealed. “With no time to reshoot, it ran.”

A few years ago her character went from sexually repressed to becoming the writer of steamy novels. “I loved it. They had me doing love scenes on the kitchen table.”

Do her kids watch?

“Yes, and they laugh. My daughter looks at the scenes I have with Jean Le Clerc (Jeremy) and shouts, ‘Mommy’s kissing the Canadian goose again!’ She calls him that because he’s French Canadian.”

Taylor, a marathon runner, tries to run six miles a day. She ran until she almost gave birth to her third child, and she worked until the day she did.

“I went into labor four days earlier than expected. I had some contractions early that morning. Suddenly, they got stronger--I knew that was it. I yelled at the director, ‘We better finish this scene in a hurry, or you’re going to have a birth on the set!’ But I finished the work.

“Noelle Beck (Trisha) went with me to the hospital because I couldn’t get a hold of my husband. Four hours later I had the baby.”

A champion of breast-feeding, Lauren admits she has sometimes astounded her mother with her courage to do it anytime, anyplace.

“The first time I was with my mom and had to breast feed, we were walking on Fifth Avenue (in New York City). My mom looks at me and asks, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Feeding the baby,’ I said. I looked up and there was my mother moving away from me like I was crazy. She didn’t want anyone to know we were together, let alone mother and daughter. Sure, I kept breast-feeding my daughter. It’s a militant mother thing with me. I just didn’t go on a lot of walks with my mom and the baby after that.”

“Loving” airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on ABC; “All My Children” airs weekdays at noon on ABC.