Actress Susan Floyd Gets To Act Her Age And Loves It

Finally, Susan Floyd can act her age.

In a fall TV season overpopulated with youthful high-school dramas, Floyd gets to play the "older woman" in "Then Came You," ABC's new fall comedy, which premieres at 8:30 p.m. Oct. 7.

"Rather than being worried about `playing young' all the time, I can concentrate on other things - such as what (my character) wants, what are her passions," says Floyd, who is in her early 30s.

"I am not concentrating on (my) age for the first time in my career," she says.

Until "pretty recently," the Western Hills, Ohio, native was taking teen-age roles. She just played Al Pacino's 20-something girlfriend in "Chinese Coffee," an Oliver Stone film that has not been released.

For ABC, she is starring as Billy, a newly divorced book editor who falls madly in love with Aidan, a 22-year-old room-service waiter in her Chicago hotel.

The clever autobiographical comedy was written by former "My So-Called Life" writer Betsy Thomas, 33, who married a 22-year-old hotel employee (and struggling actor) two months ago.

Floyd finds it liberating not to worry about her age in an industry obsessed with it. This fall alone, four new one-hour dramas about high-school life will air.

"This is the first time I've played a woman in my 30s," Floyd says.

"Billie is fun. She's loving. She's passionate. I really like her. She reminds me of myself.

"Really, honestly, for the first time I feel really confident about her age, and my age."

That is, until some impertinent TV critic inquired about her age, after asking the same question to co-star Thomas Newton.

He's 26. She's not telling.

"He's old enough that he doesn't mind answering the question. I'm old enough that I do."

Floyd has been around a few TV sets.

Some viewers may remember her 1997 guest shot on ABC's "Spin City" as a soap opera writer who used her dates with Michael Flaherty (Michael J. Fox) in story lines on "All My Children."

Nearly a decade earlier, in 1988, she made her ABC debut as Christine Cromwell on "One Life to Live," during her sophomore year at the University of Utah.

After college, she concentrated on theater, appearing in New York in Steve Martin's "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," "Ghost in the Machine" and "Young Girl and the Monsoon," the play that led to Pacino's call asking her to join him for "Chinese Coffee."

She also has appeared in "Breathing Room" and with Harrison Ford in "Random Hearts."

Playing Pacino's artist girlfriend in "Chinese Coffee" was her only taste of a May-December romance.

"I have not experienced this situation in my own life, but I do believe as a diligent actress I should research my character," she says with a laugh.

"I'm going to go through the entire cast of `Dawson's Creek!' "