It's hard to believe how Bridget Forrester has changed in the three years since Jennifer Finnigan started playing her on THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.

"She's not even the same person," declares Finnigan. "She started off as a meddling brat, very immature. She's evolved into such a great character. She's become a med student -- I figure she'll be a brain surgeon in the next three to four months. She's a caring, mature woman who's gone through a lot, probably way too much for her young age!"

In the last year alone, Bridget found out that her mother slept with her husband and bore him a child, and then fell for a man she once considered her father and then thought for sure was her brother. "Ronn (Moss, Ridge) and I would have never thought in a million years that our characters would be involved in a romance," marvels Finnigan. "Their feelings for each other really did turn on a dime. It was a difficult story to play. I didn't want to go too out of character. I think we achieved it fairly well and played it with credibility."

Still, many viewers had a hard time with the story. "[Response] was split with me," admits Finnigan. "The people who wanted to see Brooke get hurt were the ones that were for it. And there were a lot of people who were against it -- the term they used was 'gross.'"

The show has since put the brakes on the Ridge/Bridget romance and that's a "good thing," asserts Finnigan. "Shake things up temporarily and then ease back so it doesn't permanently affect ratings or characters. The way I look at it -- and I think the way Brad (Bell, executive producer/head writer) looks at it -- [is] this was chapter one of the story. It creates another layer in the show and in the dynamics of the characters. It's something that can always be picked up again down the line, whether it's a year from now, five years from now, whatever. We shocked the audience enough, and now we're pulling back and getting back into some other stories."

So what is it about Brooke and Bridget that make them attracted to the same men? "That's a good question," chuckles Finnigan. "Bridget is much more like her mother than she would admit or than she even knows. She gets herself into some sticky situations because she does follow her heart, although Bridget tries to use a little more judgment [than Brooke]."

With so much heavy material to play, Finnigan welcomes Bridget's lighter moments, like when she got drunk with Nick. "We had so much fun," she recalls of her scenes with Jack Wagner (Nick). "We were ad-libbing and improvising. That was such a relief for me as an actor because I've been playing angst-ridden and tense and frustrated and devastated for so long. To be able to have these scenes where I'm drunk and hungover, it's like comedy."