Louise Sorel

Louise Jacqueline Sorel (née Cohen; born August 6, 1940) is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her role as Vivian Alamain in Days of Our Lives from 1992-2000, 2009-2011, 2017-2018, 2020, 2023 & 2025-present, Augusta Lockridge on Santa Barbara from 1984-1991, and Emily Tanner on Beacon Hill since 2014.

Sorel was born Louise Jacqueline Cohen in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were Albert J. Cohen, a film producer, Jeanne (née Sorel), a concert pianist. Sorel is Jewish.

Sorel received theatrical training at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York. She briefly attended the Institut Français, where she studied French. She began performing on stage when she was 15 years old.

Sorel's early career was on the stage; she spent several years on Broadway, playing roles in Take Her, She's Mine and Man and Boy. She appeared in stage productions of The Lion in Winter and The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.

Sorel's first feature film appearance was in the film The Party's Over (1965). She appeared in Plaza Suite (1971), Night Gallery episode "Pickman's Model" (1971), B.S. I Love You (1971), Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972), The Return of Charlie Chan (1973), Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), Mazes and Monsters (1982), Where the Boys Are '84 (1984), and Crimes of Passion (1984), among others. Sorel has made guest appearances on more than 50 prime-time programs and TV movies, including Star Trek (as "Rayna", in the episode "Requiem for Methuselah", which aired in 1969). She also portrayed Terry Waverly, the sister-in-law of Dr. Richard Kimble, in an episode of The Fugitive in 1965.

She made other guest appearances on such programs as Bonanza (as Marie in the episode "The Strange One", 1965), Daniel Boone, The Virginian, Night Gallery, Route 66, The Big Valley, The Fugitive, Search (as Magda Reiner, in "Live Men Tell Tales"), Vega$, Hart to Hart, Medical Center, Charlie's Angels, The Incredible Hulk, Hawaii Five-O, The Eddie Capra Mysteries, Knots Landing, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, among others. She had a principal role on The Don Rickles Show.

Her first daytime dramatic role was as eccentric, meddlesome Augusta Wainwright on the NBC daytime drama Santa Barbara. She appeared on Santa Barbara from July 1984 to August 1986, then from November 1988 to May 1989, returning the following October. She remained until October 1991.

In between stints, she also spent a year appearing as a strong-willed but decent District Attorney, Judith Russell Sanders, on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, from August 1986 through November 1987. She played the villainous Vivian Alamain on the NBC daytime serial, Days of Our Lives from March 1992 until February 2000. Sorel's performance as Alamain garnered her five Soap Opera Digest Awards as "Outstanding Villainess" in 1994, "Outstanding Showstopper" in 1997, and again in 1999 as "Outstanding Scene Stealer".