Being the star of an hour-long "soap" means that Lenore often has to work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. inside the mazelike studio, so that in winter, an entire week may go by when she doesn't see sunlight. Although she receives a tremendous number of fan letters, Lenore does not have time to answer most of them.
"I'm not a letter writer anyway," she explains. "There are times when someone is so sincere that you feel you really want to respond. I have had people send me a dollar check for postage. My heart goes out sometimes; I get guilty when I read my mail. This audience is very responsive. They love to comment about the show. I get a lot of identifying mail. Some people say, 'You're like the sister I wish I had.' Sometimes there's strange mail. Sometimes there's lewd mail, which is removed before I can read it." She laughs vigorously. "That's fine with me, because then I can enjoy all my mail."
Asked about which part of the Upper West Side she lives in, Lenore declines to say. "I have some fans who would follow my footprints in the snow. You have to be careful. My husband and I tend to stay in the neighborhood a lot, and I'd hate to ruin our indiscreet little way of getting around. ... In New York people are used to seeing Al Pacino walking down the street, or Jackie O. shopping at the corner. But out of town -- at first they're not sure if it's you. A lot of people come up to me and say, 'Do you ever watch _The Guiding Light_? You look so much like that girl.' I usually tell them who I am. I can't see any point in lying. Face it, that's part of the reason we're doing this. I'm sure there's a ham in every actor, whether they're shy about it or not."
Her husband, actor Phil Peters, recently won the part of Dr. Steven Farrell on _As The World Turns_, another CBS soap opera. Within a few weeks, however, there was a change of writers. "The new writers wanted to bring in their own characters," says Lenore, "so on the show, Phil just disappeared in the night. He never showed up for his wedding. All the other characters were saying, 'Where could he be?'" She laughs at the recollection of what happened soon afterward when she and her husband were visiting Fredericksburg, Virginia: "A woman came up behind Phil while we were eating dinner, and said, 'Shame on you! How could you run off on that pretty little thing?'"