Background
Laura Koffman was born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Laura Koffman was born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
In 1986, she graduated from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, after studying acting, voice and movement.
While in high school, her family moved from Massachusetts to a large farm in Thomaston, Maine. She became involved in community theater and in 1981, decided to compete in the Mission Maine National Teenager Pageant. She also competed in the Mission National Teenagers Pageant in 1982.
She returned to Maine to continue her acting studies at both the International Film and Television Workshops in Rockport, Maine and the School for Performance Studies.
She moved to New York and after doing some modeling, she got an early acting role as the Mother in the independent film The Passing with Marion Seldes and Garrison Keillor. Koffman is best known for her role as the fourth Cassie Callison on the American Broadcasting Company soap opera One Life to Live.
Before landing the role of Cassie, Koffman played the short-term role of Lindsay on the National Broadcasting Company soap opera Another World in 1991. On One Life to Live, she succeeded Ava Haddad, who portrayed Cassie from 1983–1986, with a brief reprise in 1990.
Koffman portrayed the role from March 1991 to January 1999, winning a Soap Opera Digest Award nomination in 1993 for Outstanding Younger Leading Actress.
She left the show in 1999 when she was controversially fired while on maternity leave, something that was widely blamed on then-executive producer Jill Farren Phelps. She made several brief appearances on the series in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. She returned once again on February 15, 18 and 26 and March 1 of 2010, when Cassie"s family was being terrorized.
Koffman portrayed the title role in an off-Broadway play by Myra Bairstow entitled The Rise of Dorothy Hale from June 2007 to January 2008.
On October 28, 2008 Koffman returned to daytime television in the role of Rebecca Fowler on American Broadcasting Company"s All My Children. She also starred as Kitty in the staged reading of Otherwise by Vincent Crapelli, with Karen Ziemba and Beth Leavel.
In 2009, from June 17 to July 26, she portrayed the role of Elly in a production of Dance of the Seven Headed Mouse at the historic Beckett Theater in New New York John Simon of Bloomberg News, said of her.
"Outstanding is the Elly of Laura Bonarrigo, hitherto a model and television actress.
Beautiful and talented, she deserves a rich theatrical career.".
She became a member of The Shoestring Players, a professional children's theater group, while still in grade school.