General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20265 min read

Maura West

Maura West (born 1972, birth name Maura Jo Snyder) is an American soap opera actress best known for playing Carly Tenney Snyder on As the World Turns from 1995 to 2010 and for creating the role of mob princess Ava Jerome on General Hospital in 2013. She has won three Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, in 2007, 2010, and 2015.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Born	1972, Springfield, Massachusetts; birth name Maura Jo Snyder²
Breakthrough role	Carly Tenney on As the World Turns, April 11, 1995 to May 8, 1996, and September 10, 1997 to September 17, 2010³
Current role	Ava Jerome on General Hospital, created May 8, 2013, and continuing⁴^•³
Daytime Emmys	Outstanding Lead Actress wins in 2007 and 2010 (As the World Turns) and 2015 (General Hospital)¹
Emmy nominations	12 total Daytime Emmy nominations across her career²
Middle role	Diane Jenkins on The Young and the Restless, October 8, 2010 to August 5, 2011³
Family	Married to former As the World Turns co-star Scott DeFreitas since January 22, 2000; mother of five¹

Early life

West was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and is the youngest of four children, with two brothers, Peter and Andrew, and a sister, Amy.³

As the World Turns, 1995 to 2010

West joined the CBS soap As the World Turns on April 11, 1995, as Carly Tenney, a part she would make her signature. She left the role after a year to concentrate on motherhood, returning on September 10, 1997, and stayed with the character until the show's finale on September 17, 2010.³ Her work as Carly earned her two Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress, in 2007 and 2010, along with multiple Soap Opera Digest Award nominations, including a nod for Outstanding Villainess in 1996.¹^•⁵

The 2007 win was her first. It was presented at the 34th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, held June 15, 2007, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, for the role of Carly Tenney.⁶ Her second came at the 37th Annual Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards, presented in Las Vegas on June 27, 2010, where As the World Turns swept the acting categories, with West, Michael Park, and Julie Pinson winning lead actress, lead actor, and supporting actress respectively.⁷

During the run, her private and professional lives also intertwined: her fiancé at the time, co-star Scott DeFreitas, proposed at a New York Yankees game, and the two married in 2000.³ West was earlier married to Jonathan Knight from 1995 to their 1999 divorce.² With DeFreitas she has four children, Joseph Peter (born 2000), Katherine Marie (born 2002), Basil John (born 2007), and Birdie (born 2009), in addition to son Benjamin from her first marriage, born in 1996.²^•¹ TV Guide notes that her son Joseph's birth in 2000 was filmed for the TLC reality series A Baby Story.⁸ One of her children, Joe West, has gone on to work as a Broadway actor.²

Diane Jenkins on The Young and the Restless

When As the World Turns ended in 2010, West moved to The Young and the Restless, where she played Diane Jenkins from October 8, 2010, to August 5, 2011.³ A TV Guide profile of the move called her, fresh off her double Emmy win as Carly, one of the most revered women in soaps.⁹

Ava Jerome on General Hospital

On May 8, 2013, West made her debut on ABC's General Hospital as Ava Jerome, an art dealer concealing her identity as the daughter of late mob boss Victor Jerome and the not-so-dead Julian Jerome.⁴ It is her third soap role, and she has described her nervousness on joining a show that was, in her words, very different from the more "mom and pop" As the World Turns.⁴ ABC's cast biography describes the role as created by West in 2013, following her 15-year portrayal of Carly Snyder.¹⁰

Ava has become one of the show's defining villains, a character who, in one reporter's summary, has killed, conned, backstabbed, and fought dirty with her own daughter while retaining a vulnerability that keeps viewers guessing.¹¹ West has said she deliberately styled Ava as a throwback to a 1940s mobstress, always in dresses with a wavy bob.⁴ Landmark storylines in her first decade included Ava's affair with Sonny Corinthos, which produced her daughter Avery; her stint in 2015 posing as a supposedly identical twin, "Denise DeMuccio"; the pill-swapping that contributed to Morgan Corinthos's death in 2016; devastating facial burns from a fire in 2017; the murder of her daughter Kiki by Ryan Chamberlain in 2018-19; and her marriage to Nikolas Cassadine beginning in 2020.⁴

In 2015 the role brought her a third Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress, this time for General Hospital, and she has collected further nominations in 2016, 2018, and 2020.¹^•³

Recognition and later work

Across her career West has been nominated for 12 Daytime Emmy Awards, with nominations in lead, supporting, and pre-nomination categories spanning As the World Turns, The Young and the Restless, and General Hospital.³^•² IMDb lists her screen credits as totaling more than 2,000 episodes across her three soap roles, including 1,033 episodes of As the World Turns from 1995 to 2010.¹² She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their children.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Screen people and creators › Screen actors of the Anglosphere and Europe › American actors: 2000s onward › Surnames U to We

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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