To most Canadians, Tonya Lee Williams is best known for her role as the beautiful Dr. Olivia Winter on the popular daytime drama The Young And The Restless—a role she played for 20 years and for which she received two Emmy nominations and two NAACP awards (plus a recently announced 2010 nomination).

But before the years of playing opposite hunky on-screen husband Kristoff St. John, this Ryerson grad was also recognized for her work on another popular daytime show, albeit for a totally different demographic. (Okay, I’ll guiltily admit that I still like watching it in reruns.) That’s right, kids—she was a host on the hit series The Polka Dot Door. In reality she only did three weeks of the show, but it aired so often that people think she was on it forever.

It’s been a long journey since those days of constantly missing Polkaroo, and Williams has tackled everything from working on television and film to running the Publicity Group and the successful Reel World Film Festival, now in its tenth year.

We sat down to talk with Tonya Lee Williams about her transition from young actress in Toronto to successful businesswoman in demand on both sides of the border.

England-born and Oshawa-raised Williams had worked consistently in Toronto throughout theatre school, but it wasn’t until 1987 that she decided to take the plunge into the American market and expand her opportunities.

She spent three years guest-starring on several series before landing the one that would turn her into a household name in Canada.

In 1990, the late Bill Bell, a creative force at CBS, had just created a new daytime drama and was looking for an actress to fill the role of Drusilla Winters. But the part wasn’t exactly one that Williams wanted.

“I didn’t really like the role; playing the stereotypical black parts never interested me. (Drusilla was described as an illiterate black girl.) I really don’t see myself being cast in those roles anyway.”

“But I went, because you want to eat. And at least the casting director would see me and keep me in mind for something else. So I did the audition, but not as the character—just as myself. It would’ve been laughable for me to try and do something forced. When I left the audition, my agent called and said that they wanted to see me again, but for a different role. And it turned out that Bill Bell had actually created the role of Olivia just for me. After seeing my original audition, he decided to create a counter to Drusilla—a sister who was completely different.”

For fifteen years Williams played the role that was handmade for her. But by 2005 the petite actress decided to take a much-needed hiatus in order to regroup and unwind.

For most of us, that would usually mean doing nothing. But while on ‘hiatus,’ Williams still kept her fingers in a lot of pots, particularly the Reel World Film Festival. Williams started the festival, originally founded in 2001, as a platform for bringing awareness to artists of different ethnicities.

“I thought, ‘What could we do to give people of colour an opportunity?’ I never saw the world as black or white or Latino. I always thought of Canada as a melting pot of diverse people living together. When it came time to doing a fest, I wanted it to be what I saw as true in Canada, and I didn’t feel as though segregating was the way to go. We weren’t trying to exclude any work. The idea of the festival is to show people from inside the biz (and out) that we should be making Canadian projects that integrate all these different ethnicities, bringing them all together. Screens are a powerful medium, and young filmmakers can create a power with their voices. At Reel World we try to create that platform—to give birth to a portal of opportunity.”

And she’s been doing that now for ten years. But despite the success of the festival and her career, Williams does not see herself as a good businesswoman and finds the ‘biz’ part of show business challenging.

“I really like doing character work. The rest of this biz is difficult. I am great at motivating people, but I don’t see myself as being good at it. I find networking difficult and stressful. Plus, I don’t remember faces or names. I really wish I could remember, but I can’t! For years I thought that the executive producer’s name on Y&R was Ken. It wasn’t until I was sitting in a chair, talking about Ken to the makeup lady, that I discovered his name was really Ed. But he would still answer me when I called him Ken anyway, and he let me call him that for years,” she laughs.

“So all of that networking stuff is work to me. But when you get a script, with a character you’re developing, that is effortless. Everything else is stressful.”

It’s hard to believe that this vibrant and passionate actress has any trouble with that. Yet it’s her passion and ability to inspire others that has led her to where she is today.

“I always tell people that you need to know why you want to take this on. It’s hard to look at life as a journey of fifty to sixty years. I think you need not worry about the end result, but instead ask yourself why you are taking any of these steps. I usually ask myself, ‘Am I making the choice out of fear?’ And if I am, then I try to avoid that choice. My journey for what I am doing is not to simply end up somewhere. I just want to work, and I try to go in directions where I can take a different journey. Usually I’ll take the one that’s more unknown than safe. Because the safe choices are always there. Even though a project didn’t reap a lot of money, for example, I still had so much fun doing it. I don’t think safe choices go anywhere. But that works for me. I feel like there’s always a safety net underneath me. That kind of quality is going to determine who you are as a person and the choices you make in your life. Wherever you take your risks is part of your journey. And as long as you know why you are doing what you are doing, that’s all that matters. What anyone else thinks is irrelevant.”