Kathryn Hays

Kathryn Hays, born Kay Piper on July 26, 1934, in Princeton, Illinois, was an American actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television across several decades. She died on March 25, 2022, having spent her final years in an assisted living facility. Her daughter, Sherri Mancusi, confirmed in a November 2022 tribute on The Locher Room YouTube channel that Hays had suffered from dementia in the years preceding her death.

Hays was the only child of Roger and Daisy Piper, whose maiden name she would later adopt as her stage surname. Her parents divorced shortly after her birth, and she was raised in Joliet by her mother, a bookkeeper and banker, and her stepfather, a salesman named Arnold Gottlieb. She took classes at Northwestern University and worked as a model before pursuing an acting career. In 1962, she formally changed her name from Kay Piper to Kathryn Hays.

Her Broadway career ran from 1961 to 1963 and included three productions: The Moon Besieged, The Irregular Verb to Love, and Mary, Mary. She also appeared in a regional production of Dames at Sea alongside Bernadette Peters.

Early in her career, Hays accumulated extensive episodic television credits. In 1964 she appeared in Mr. Novak in the episode "One Way to Say Goodbye," and she went on to guest in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Road West. In 1968 she played the central character in the Star Trek episode "The Empath," portraying a mute alien with healing powers. That same year she appeared in the film Counterpoint, having previously appeared in Ride Beyond Vengeance in 1966. She also played Julie Williams in the television film Yuma. Before joining As the World Turns, she portrayed nurse Leslie Jackson Bauer on The Guiding Light. In later years her television work included appearances on Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

In 1972, Hays was cast as Kim Sullivan Hughes on the CBS daytime drama As the World Turns, a role she held until the series concluded on September 17, 2010. She was prominently featured in the show's 50th anniversary episode, which aired in April 2006. In May 2020, she took part in an As the World Turns reunion episode of The Locher Room, a YouTube series reuniting soap opera casts.

Hays was married three times. Her first marriage, to salesman Sidney Steinberg in 1957, produced a daughter, Sherri. In 1966 she married actor Glenn Ford; the couple divorced in 1969. Her third husband was Wolfgang Lieschke, who worked in the advertising industry.