For 20 years, Stephanie Forrester has ruled the Forrester roost with an iron fist. Whenever things haven't gone her way, the übercontrol freak has never been afraid to take matters into her own hands, resorting to "extreme measures" (to put it politely!) to get what she wants. Here's a rundown of her mega-machinations.

10. Just when Stephanie thought she was down and out after being ostracized by her family, she hit the jackpot when she discovered documents showing that her late father had left her, not Eric, in control of Forrester Creations. She wasted no time playing this new trump card once she learned that Eric knew about this all along. With Massimo at her side, Stephanie assumed control of the family business, giving Brooke and Eric the proverbial pink slip.

9. After her mother, Ann, turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the horrible abuse Stephanie suffered from by the hands of her late father, Stephanie returned the "favor" and announced to Eric and her family that her mother had died. While Steph's perennially put-upon sister, Pam, catered to their mother's every wish and whim, Steph led Eric and her whole family to believe that Ann was dead — going so far as to arrange a bogus memorial service for her.

8. When Stephanie learned the awful truth that her longtime pal Taylor had mowed down her daughter-in-law Darla in a hit-and-run, rather than make Taylor pay or bring her to justice, Steph kept her dirty little secret and even helped her cover her tracks. She went so far as to explicitly encourage a romance between Taylor and Thorne, who had no clue that his fiancée killed his wife.

7. After a minor stroke left her with amnesia, Stephanie took on a new life and identity amid L.A.'s homeless. When she finally did regain her memory, Stephanie pretended that she was still an amnesiac, and forged a letter from Eric to Brooke in which "Eric" professed his love for Stephanie, to try to bust up Brooke and Eric.

6. Stephanie's long-running feud with Brooke finally pushed her over the edge when she learned that Brooke was now engaged to her other son, Thorne. Suffering flashbacks of all her past run-ins with Brooke, Steph snapped and went postal on Brooke at Big Bear, trying to stab her to death in the family cabin.

5. Stephanie defied the odds — and Felicia's wishes — when she whisked her dying daughter away for cutting-edge experimental treatment in an eleventh-hour attempt to save Felicia from the ravages of cancer. After leading her entire family to believe that Felicia had passed, Stephanie shocked them all into silence when she revealed an alive and steadily recuperating Felicia.

4. After losing Forrester Creations to Nick and Jackie, Mama Bear Stephanie made her much-anticipated revenge play when she brought Capt. Jerry Kramer, Jackie's former pimp, to town. While strutting him down the runway during the "new" Forrester Creations' debut fashion show, Steph took to the P.A. and outed Jackie's shameful past as a whore in front of the crowd of horrified onlookers — including the international press. Talk about a showstopper!

3. Stephanie and Jackie's escalating war of words over which of their sons belonged with Brooke took a tragic turn when Jackie did a Cirque-du-Soleil somersault over the Forrester banister and onto the marble floor below. Stephanie maintained her innocence, insisting Jackie's literal fall from grace was simply an accident.

2. After Taylor came back from the dead, Stephanie was hell-bent on reuniting her with Ridge to shut out Brooke once and for all. So she faked a heart attack to play on Ridge's sympathies — and paid a doctor $1 million to buy his complicity. It worked. Ridge went so far as to renew his vows with Taylor in his mother's hospital room, no less. Stephanie nearly created some real hospital patients when Jackie and Brooke exposed her charade: She smacked her doctor, slapped Brooke, and attempted to whack both Brooke and Jackie with her walking cane. But Eric got the last lick in, when he "slapped" her with divorce papers.

1. When Stephanie presented an emotionally distraught nemesis Brooke with a little present — a gift-wrapped gun for Brooke to kill herself with — it was beyond "vintage" Stephanie (more like "private label reserve"). And they say with gifts it's the thought that counts. This was one present where, "You shouldn't have, Stephanie!"