Veleka Gray

Life and career

Gray was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1970, she played the role of Laura Donnelly Elliott on Love is a Many Splendored Thing, taking over the role from actress Donna Mills. In 1974 she was hired to play the vixen Susan Pritchett on How To Survive A Marriage.

In 1975 she joined the cast of Somerset as Victoria Paisley opposite Joel Crothers, who played Julian Cannell. The pair were engaged to be married in real life when he died in 1985. In 1977, she was cast in the role of Mia Marriott on Love of Life. In April 1980, she originated the role of nurse Lyla Montgomery on As the World Turns.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1983, she started on The Young and the Restless in February 1983 as sassy manicurist Ruby Collins. Ruby had Allison Bancroft (Lynn Wood) as a regular client. Ruby's function was essentially to inform Allison of the porno film featuring her son's girlfriend Nikki Reed Newman, and later to act as the audience surrogate as Allison expressed her enduring disapproval of Nikki and devised various schemes to discredit her. To portray Ruby, Gray was costumed in a frizzy platinum blond wig and ostentatious clothing.

Two months later, in April, Gray began a contract role as a different character in the same series. Her second character was Dr. Sharon Reaves, Patty Williams' demure and earnest psychiatrist. This dual role made Gray the only actor in soap history to play two roles simultaneously on the same series, that were neither related nor lookalikes.