HILLARY SMITH (NORA BUCHANAN, ONE LIFE TO LIVE) loves being helpful. Heck, one time she even tried to help a journalist desperate for a teaspoon of dirt. 'This happened a long time ago, somewhere during the 6 ½ years I was on As the World Turns (playing Margo). A writer from TV Guide was looking for an angle for an article on me." Smith's strong eyebrows rise; her full, shapely mouth does a one-sided smile. "You know? He needed a 'hook.' He'd talked to people when I wasn't around, he'd talked to everyone and couldn't find anything. Finally, he says to me, 'I can't come up with anything!' So I said to him, 'If you're looking for a handle for your article, well... I'm perfect.'"

She delivers the line without laughing, her face frozen in a comic look of exaggerated innocence. It's her good friend and dressing-room mate Susan Haskell (Marty) who cracks up. A perfect person? This maniac? "Yeah, right," Haskell teases, playing the moment with extravagant disrespect.

Professionally, Smith does not have a perfect track record: To date, it's merely exceptional. Most actors among the 10 percent earning a living at their craft don't earn it in theater plus television plus feature films. Smith has hit all three, starting with an off-Broadway play while still studying at the high-IQ Sarah Lawrence College. Theater jobs in both off-Broad- way and Broadway productions continued after graduation, and keep on coming. During the last four years, Smith has performed on Broadway in the Pulitzer Prize-winner The Heidi Chronicles and the off-Broadway success Lips Together, Teeth Apart, to cite a pair of high points.

Most of Smith's paychecks, as daytime-watchers well know, have been issued by television. In 1982, the Massachusetts native started a year of tube time on The Doctors, as nurse Kit McCormick. Not long after that, she replaced Margaret Colin as Margo on AIWT; “Any cast with Justin Deas in it is a great cast," Smith states about her first Tom Hughes.

Oakdale lost Smith in 1989. Several nighttime pilots popped up in the next few years, but Smith was eventually lured back to daytime in 1992 by Nora Gannon, a role unusually ripe for humor and free of stereotype. Viewers connected with Nora immediately, too, as did Smith's peers and the television press. On their dressing-room wall, Haskell and Smith have hung a happy and humorous photo of themselves with their respective mates on the night both women won 1994 Daytime Emmy Awards. “Ah, yes, the distinguished group," Smith drawls, signaling the visitor to come take a closer look. Haskell, Smith and Haskell's longtime companion, Dr. Tom Caffrey, all stand in roughly the same height range; Phillip "Nip" Smith, at 6 feet 7 inches, appears in the photograph primarily as a bow tie, an expanse of white shirt and a cummerbund. His handsome face hovers up near the picture's frame. "We rented a limo, and asked Susan and Tom to join us. We literally wanted to see Nip and Tom get out of the same limo -- that's what Susan and I had in mind, anyway." Over by the closet, getting ready for another scene, Haskell begins laughing again: "We always say that if Nip weren't in the picture, you'd get to see Hillary's full gown and mine, too."

Husband Nip, 10-year-old daughter Courtney and son Phips, 8, didn’t see as much of Mom as usual last year. During the ‘94-95 primetime season, Smith commuted between L.A. and New York to play Gene Wilder’s wife in the film star’s sitcom Something Wilder. Even the critics who savaged the show praised Smith’s performances. She came away a deep understanding of the phrase “frequent flyer miles,” plus two cherished new friends in Wilder and his wife, Karen. Her post-game analysis of her double-life experience is sharp. “As I’ve said for the record before, I did not take Wilder as a way to leave daytime for prime time. I feel very strongly about this. Daytime is a very important medium: I vote for any soap opera that can hold its head up and keep doing better. And actors should never have a problem moving back and forth between day and evening shows. If you’re a good soap actor, you’re going to be a a phenomenal prime-time actor.” Acting talent wasn’t Something Wilder’s problem. “At first, on Wilder, the cast was trying to work without a clear concept for the show; we didn’t get writers who had that clear concept until after Christmas. Had we done that last batch of Wilder shows at the beginning of the season, we’d probably still be on the air. But I’m grateful for all of it, for every single episode I shot.”

Smith’s gratitude should be taken seriously; it’s the way she moves through her life. “ I think the greatest gift I was given was the ability to make the choice, the choice to find happiness. And that ability comes from always understanding that absolutely everything happens for a reason, and everything happens for the best. And if you live like that–truly –then you’ll look for the positive in every situation that comes along.

“This means that with every situation – personal conflict, fianancial problems, whatever– it means there’s an acceptance. Not surrender; not passivity. There’s an acceptance of a situation, then a chance to go through and look at options. Yes, this definitely applies to relationships. And relationships, to me, are the most precious thing in the world.”

They are also at ground zero in her most enduring struggle: “This is a problem nowadays, I’m actually learning a lot about. It’s that I’ve been the peacemaker and the compromiser since growing up; I took on that role in my family. I've always chosen to play it out by becoming the negotiator: I'll put myself between two people, physically and emotionally, if they're battling. I'll absorb the negative energy from each one, and help calm them, help them to compromise.

"I see now that what I've been doing actually has been a disservice to all three parties -- the two angry people, and myself, too. Because I've been putting myself in a place where I've been taking on their woes, which isn't good for me. Plus, I haven't been allowing them to work out their differences or whatever for themselves. This summer, I tried in this one particular circumstance to stay out of it. It was really difficult, because it was between two people I love so much. But they ended up finding a wonderful honesty with each other, on their own."

And when there's been hurt or anger between Smith herself and another person, she's still tried to play diplomat. "For the sake of maintaining peace and happiness, I haven't listened to myself inside or to the other person. Listening is the key thing. Instead, I'd censor myself, absorb the other person's pain, absorb my own frustration, suppress it, and then it starts to build and build.., anyway, all this peacemaking has been at the cost of everyone's emotional growth and health and autonomy. Including mine."

It's far easier for Smith to see her progress when the problem comes up with her kids. "If I start feeling anger with them, I realize it's usually because I'm tired, and I've got a short fuse. So I tell them that. And I tell them how I'm going to start seeming irrational and angry pretty soon here, but I'm not mad at them, so let's all just take Mommy to bed. Last weekend I did that. What I was also trying to do was get Coutney to take a nap, too, because she was also exhausted. We both fell asleep in each other's arms for a little while, which was wonderful."

Holding on to the image of that moment, Smith's expression is worth 2,000 words, at least. And that's exactly the kind of visual power necessary for feature-film success -- which has eluded Smith to date. If her career dream comes true, this "imperfection'' will be corrected. "I was in the movie version of Hair in '79, and in '84 I did Purple Hearts, a Vietnam drama, with Cheryl Ladd. I got to have a wonderful time with Sandra Bullock making a comedy in 1992, Love Potion #9 ~ I've seen her since in LA., and she's as earthy and terrific as all those articles say she is. So if I can have my dream, wth money no object? I would love to produce my own films I already have one story I want to do, but I need to work with a writer’s mind, somebody who puts pen to paper. Because no one will hire me in films: You know it's like 'We've got Bonnie Bedelia, we’ve got Anne Archer, we’ve got this-and -that person.'" Smith appears mildly annoyed. 'Anyway, producing my own films would give me work, and also the chance to cast. Not according to public opinion, but according to people I truly believe in. Man, I would love to give those actors the work."

One casting decision is already made. "Scott Bryce (ex-Craig Montgomery, ATWT) is a very dear friend; he played my brother all those years on World Turns, and I was his roommate in LA. when I was shooting Something Wilder. He came on for Wilder's last episode to play my old boyfriend, Chip." The urge to laugh is already creeping up on Smith. "So we had to do a kissing scene. We bumped foreheads; we bumped noses; we smashed chins. It got to the point where I said to him, 'Look. You turn your head that way, I'll turn my head this way.' There was absolutely nothing natural about the two of us going for a kiss. It was just too funny, and we kept laughing and laughing. Finally, Gene Wilder said, 'You guys are pathetic!' And we were." So Hillary Smith, movie mogul, will never cast Scott Bryce as her love interest: She's not perfect, but she's not pathetic, either. "I'm very dignified!" Smith states, with delicious, happy goofiness underlining her command. "I have a lot of dignity, and I don't expect you to ever, ever, get over it." — LAURA FISSINGER