Esta TerBlanche, who played Gillian Andrassy on ABC's All My Children, died July 18, 2024. She was just 51.
"I can not believe I am posting this. It's with a heavy heart that my friend and client Esta TerBlanche passed away Thursday of natural causes. An autopsy report is pending," Lisa Rodrigo shared in a post on Facebook. "I am still processing and in shock. Esta was a beautiful soul in and out. I was proud to know her and work with her. May she RIP with the angels that she is."
TerBlanche was born on January 7, 1973, in Rusterburg, South Africa. In 1991, she was crowned Miss Teen South Africa and later starred on the South African soap opera Egoli: Place of Gold before emigrating to the United States. Her résumé included various theater credits, including The Glass Menagerie, Pygmalion, and Hear Ye, Hear Ye.
TerBlanche arrived in Los Angeles first but then made the move to New York, where she brought her soap talents to All My Children in 1997 as Dimitri Marick's cousin Gillian Andrassy, a Hungarian princess.
In 2021, TerBlanche told Soap Central that she often made errors when speaking, as English was not her native language. Those mistakes ended up making their way to the fictional world of All My Children -- and you can watch a compilation of them at the end of this article.
"I do always make mistakes with my language because my first language is Afrikaans," she said. "So, on set, I made a lot of mistakes with my language, and the writers could see on the monitor what I was doing, and they thought I was funny, and they started to write it on purpose into the show."
TerBlanche enjoyed a popular pairing with Cameron Mathison's Ryan Lavery and remained with the soap until 2001, when Gillian was killed off. The actress returned to AMC ten years later as Gillian's ghost during the soap's last weeks on the air.
During her years not in the American soap spotlight, TerBlanche worked in her native South Africa on several projects but also took a step back from performing.
"I did a few things -- I hosted a supermodel television series in South Africa, and I did a short film and a few documentaries -- but I did take a break from acting for a while. I did do a lot of things, though, now that I think about it! But back in South Africa," she told Soap Central nearly three years ago.
TerBlanche expressed interest in returning to soaps in a recent interview with Soap Opera Digest, where she noted that she kept in touch with former AMC co-star Mathison, who now plays Drew Quartermaine on General Hospital. She also spoke of her involvement with the South African cancer foundation Create Your Breakthrough.
"I lost my mom to cancer and my dad also has cancer, so I just feel really passionate about this," she said. "I would be so thrilled if, in this lifetime, we can come up with some kind of a cure. It would be such a miracle. Seeing someone go through this in front of your eyes is just heartbreaking."
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