Victorian novel– Actress Colleen Zenk moves on & moves in

They left behind the Redding, Conn., home Zenk had lived in throughout her marriage and moved about 20 minutes away, to Easton. And they did it fast; she barely gave herself time to think twice. “I saw this beautiful house and grabbed it quickly,” she says of the home she spotted last autumn.

The 22-year-old reproduction of a Victorian house, which she rents, sits on 3 acres and measures about 4,000 square feet, and there’s an additional 1,000-square-foot suite over the garage. The house has a parlor, a family room, a dining room, a breakfast nook, four bedrooms, 4½ bathrooms and a home office. The over-the-garage suite boasts a bedroom, a dining area, an enormous bathroom and a walk-in closet bigger than the house’s living room.

And though the house is relatively new, it’s full of classic details like molding, French doors, oak trim throughout, an oak staircase, two fireplaces and stained- glass windows. The custom-made kitchen, Zenk says, is “perfectly laid out for a cook . . . Every shelf is a pull-out, every drawer has dividers; there are file cabinets for cookbooks and food magazines, there’s even an old-fashioned breadbox.”

Then there’s the regal master bathroom, with a double-height ceiling, a double sink and a two-person tub surrounded by windows.

Last fall, when it came time to move, Zenk got her closest girlfriends to pitch in. “It was strictly a female move,” she says. “After all the big furniture was brought in by the moving men on Oct. 4, everything else was moved by women. I put all my china in wicker laundry baskets and carried them to the new house. We put all the books in cars and brought them here. It was wild.”

By Nov. 1, everything was out of the old house and into the new. Two weeks later, the home was picture-perfect.

Zenk describes her decorating style as eclectic; she has several valuable early American pieces, an antique English bar and many items that came from the “As the World Turns” set — the chandelier and candlesticks in the dining room, five classic French bergere chairs and a barrel-back armchair.

In mid-November, after Zenk had settled in, an old friend from her hometown of Barrington, Ill., introduced her to a project that’s shaking up her life. “She e-mailed me on Nov. 16 to ask if I’d mind if she started a Facebook page for me, saying I should be a contestant on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ ” Zenk says. “I said, ‘Go for it.’

“A nucleus of four women — they call themselves Team Colleen — got involved and started this page that says ‘Colleen Zenk deserves to be on DWTS.’ I feel funny about the word ‘deserves.’ Maybe ‘needs’ to be, ‘wants’ to be. It would be wonderful!”

Team Colleen reached out to soap opera Web sites and blogs, and in six weeks, 10,000 people contacted “DWTS” to lend support. (Visit the Facebook group for more details.)

One of the reasons Zenk wants to be on the show is to discuss her battle with oral cancer. “I’m a two-time survivor,” she says. “Oral cancer can completely end an actor’s career. For a while, I couldn’t speak clearly on ‘ATWT,’ but here I am. I just want to raise awareness of this disease. And I want to show that it doesn’t mean your life is over just because you’ve had cancer.”

So, is the “DWTS” campaign working? A show spokeswoman says: “Our policy is not to comment on the casting process. No one . . . will say whether or not she’s being considered.”

Zenk is hedging her bets. She’s preparing a one-woman show — featuring her favorite songs — that’s about her personal journey from Illinois to Broadway to motherhood to cancer survivor. And she’s enjoying her new house and new life.

“I feel like it’s been a rebirth,” she says. “I’m like a little bird that was just hatched.”