Louise Sorel

During the 1990s on daytime soap "Days of Our Lives," actress Louise Sorel put together an impressive awards run that was, in a sense, the exact opposite of Susan Lucci's long-suffering loss streak. Although the Soap Opera Digest Awards are not quite of the same stature, Sorel won five consecutive honors from the group between 1994 and 1999 for her work as the evil family matriarch, Vivian Alamain.

Sorel returned to the show briefly in 2009, capping what was her second long run in the daytime genre. Previously, she played the part of mother, wife, and nosy neighbor Augusta Lockridge on "Santa Barbara."

Sorel's long lead into soap opera work began at the turn of the '60s, with concurrent stage, TV, and film work. In 1980, she scored a series regular role on "Ladies' Man," a sitcom about a man working at a women's magazine.

She has been married to a pair of actors, Herb Edelman and Ken Howard, and in 1972 played the wife of Don Rickles on the comedian's very short-lived "The Don Rickles Show."