The ageless and fabulous Colleen Zenk recently spoke with Michael Logan for TV Guide about the end of As The World Turns this coming Friday. In yet another moving chat featuring the woman who breathed life into Barbara Ryan for the better part of 30 years, Zenk revealed how having kicked cancer in the nads helps her cope with whatever life throws at her— including a real-life divorce and soap cancellations.

 TV Guide Magazine: You've been through so much since the cancer diagnosis in 2007. How did it affect your work?

Zenk: I feel extraordinarily freed up as an actor, and that has everything to do with what I've gone through. I would not be able to tackle the recent material with as much abandon as I did had life not dished me all this crap these last few years. It's a kind of fearlessness, but it certainly wasn't conscious. It wasn't until this past spring that I realized I was no longer working in such an uptight way. I said to [exec producer] Chris Goutman, "If I get too big, just rein me in." But he never did. A few years ago, I would not have been able to portray Barbara as an older woman with the kind of confidence I did in this go-round. A great deal of that is having survived cancer twice. There's nothing like staring death in the face and saying, "Screw you!"