So when her agent offered her a role on the soap One Life to Live — as a housewife-turned-prostitute named Karen Wolek — she almost said no. “It’ll ruin you,” people warned. “No serious actress survives daytime TV.”
She took it anyway.
And in 1979, she delivered one of the most electric performances in television history — a courtroom confession scene so raw that studio staff stopped working to watch. “My name is Karen Wolek, and I’m a prostitute,” she cried, shaking and defiant. The silence after that line was deafening. Then came the standing ovation.
The scene won her an Emmy — and changed what TV could do with truth. But instead of chasing easy fame, Light disappeared from soaps to reclaim the stage. When she returned to television years later, it was as Angela Bower in Who’s the Boss? — a confident, career-driven woman running a business and a household, flipping the sitcom gender rules of the ’80s.
Behind the laughs was a deeper mission. Light had spent years speaking about AIDS awareness, LGBTQ+ rights, and women’s empowerment — long before it was fashionable or safe. “You use the light you’ve been given,” she said once. “If you hide it, you waste it.”
Decades later, she’s won Tonys, Emmys, and the one thing Hollywood rarely gives women over 60: respect that doesn’t fade.
Judith Light didn’t survive typecasting.
She destroyed it.