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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Catching up with Ann Jillian

Jillian
Ann Jillian in 2001; inset, Jillian performing on Broadway in "Sugar Babies" in 1979.  


By Serena Kappes
PEOPLE

(PEOPLE) -- What was supposed to be a quick chat ended up changing Ann Jillian's life. The sultry blonde actress and singer, who had recently been through breast cancer surgery, was asked to give a five-minute speech at a women's event in New Orleans in 1985.

Though she was apprehensive, Jillian went and "wound up speaking for close to an hour," she says. "I hadn't realized how much I had learned about my subject by having gone through it."

Today she continues to use her talents as a performer and integrate her singing into her work as a motivational speaker. "I still get to utilize the tools I learned as an entertainer but now I use them (for) more important causes," says Jillian, now 52.

The former "It's a Living" star first discovered a pea-size lump in her left breast in January 1985. By April, after a mass also appeared in her right breast and the cancer was spreading at an alarming rate, Jillian had a double mastectomy. The operation was a success.

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Six years later, Jillian and her manager husband, Andy Murcia, now 61, a former Chicago police sergeant, were shocked to find out they were going to have a baby. At the time, Jillian was 41 and the odds seemed stacked against her. "I often tell audiences that God saved my life from breast cancer just so I could give life to our son," Jillian says about son Andrew Joseph, now 10. "I'm a very proud mother."

Born Ann Jura Nauseda, the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants Joseph Nauseda, a machinist, and Margaret, a homemaker (Joseph died in 2000; Margaret in 1997), Jillian got her show biz start at the age of 10, playing Little Bo Peep in the 1961 film "Babes in Toyland."

She found success as an adult on Broadway opposite Mickey Rooney in the 1979 musical "Sugar Babies" and later on TV as the sexy cocktail waitress Cassie Cranston on the 1980s' sitcom "It's a Living." Jillian also brought screen siren Mae West to life in a 1982 TV biopic. In 1988, she played herself in the TV movie "The Ann Jillian Story," for which she won a Golden Globe.

But Jillian's acting took a backseat when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. "It took priority in my life over everything," she says. "In Hollywood, taking one's presence out of the public eye of the industry is a career killer, but so is turning 50. I did both during this time spent nursing my mom."

As for leaving acting behind, says Jillian, "it just seemed to be the right thing to do." She still sings, though mostly at corporate engagements rather than on Broadway, and says that she sees her life as part of a greater plan. "God seemed to lead me away from my acting to a new chapter of life as a speaker to hopefully inspire others in as many ways as I can."

Jesus Trivino contributed to this report.


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