Eileen Fulton dies aged 91
The veteran actress - who was known as the first bad girl of daytime television for her role as Lisa Miller in As the World Turns - passed away on 14 July in Asheville, North Carolina, at the age of 91 following a period of declining health, her family announced in an obituary.
Eileen joined As the World Turns in May 1960 until the CBS show went off air in September 2010, making her one of the longest-starring soap actors in US TV history, despite the role initially being created as a short-term character.
The actress - whose real name was Margaret Elizabeth McLarty - was inducted into the Soap Opera Hall of Fame in 1998 and received a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.
Eileen was raised in Asheville and moved to New York to pursue an acting career after graduating from Greensboro College with a music degree in 1956.
In the Big Apple, she studied with famed acting coaches Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg at the Neighborhood Playhouse, as well as dance teacher Martha Graham, and her feature debut came in 1960 in Girl of the Night.
Eileen was also a writer and singer and performed a cabaret act for years in venues in both New York and Los Angeles.
At one point during her time on As the World Turns - which was then broadcast live - she was also appearing on Broadway in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf and in off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks.
She co-wrote her first autobiography, How My World Turns, in 1970 and jointly wrote her second, As My World Still Turns, 25 years later. Eileen also wrote a series of murder-mystery books and a novel titled Soap Opera.
She retired in 2019 and moved back to North Carolina.
Eileen is survived by her brother, Charles Furman McLarty, niece Katherine Morris and their children, and her sister-in-law Chris Page McLarty.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Perth Now
6 hours ago
- Perth Now
British jazz singer Cleo Laine dead at 97
British jazz singer Cleo Laine, who performed with musical greats including Frank Sinatra and starred as an actress in London's West End and on Broadway, has died aged 97. Her death was announced on Friday in a statement from her children Jacqui and Alec. Born to an English mother and a Jamaican father in a suburb of London in 1927, she initially worked as a hair-dresser, a hat-trimmer and a librarian. She married in 1946 and had a son while still a teenager. Driven on by her dream of becoming a singer, she divorced and got her big break in 1951, when she joined the band of English saxophonist and clarinettist John Dankworth at 24. Dankworth's band decided her name was too long - at the time she thought she had been born Clementine Campbell, though a passport application later revealed her mother had used her own surname Hitching on the birth certificate. The men of the Dankworth Seven band thought her name was too cumbersome for a poster, and that her nickname Clem was too cowboy-like. They settled on a new stage persona for her by drawing "Cleo" and "Laine" from hats. In 1958, she and Dankworth married. Their home became a magnet for London's jazz set: friends included stars from across the Atlantic such as Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young and Dizzy Gillespie. After acting as well as singing in Britain through the 1960s, Laine toured Australia in 1972 and performed at New York's Lincoln Centre. The recording of a further show, at Carnegie Hall, won her a Grammy. Recordings included Porgy and Bess with Ray Charles. In 1992 she appeared with Frank Sinatra for a series of shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London, but she was best known for her work with Dankworth's bands. He later became her musical director. The couple built their own auditorium in the grounds of their home near London and were friends with Princess Margaret, the sister of Queen Elizabeth II. Their two children went on to become musicians. Dankworth - who Laine described as being "joined at the hip" with her - died in 2010. Hours after his death, Laine performed a scheduled show in their auditorium, announcing the news about her husband only at the end of the concert.
Perth Now
19 hours ago
- Perth Now
Renee Rapp felt 'really depressed' after 2024 success
Renee Rapp felt "really, really, really depressed" in 2024. The 25-year-old singer enjoyed huge success last year, when she toured Europe and achieved the biggest hit of her career with Not My Fault - but Renee then felt the weight of fan expectations. Speaking to the BBC, Renee - who is dating singer Towa Bird - explained: "I was told that, basically, everybody wanted me to put a single out in the summer and an album in the fall. "I started panicking. I was like, 'Holy crap, how am I gonna do that?', because I was really, really, really depressed last year. I was so overworked, and I was so run down. I didn't have any time to get myself together. "I was crying to my girlfriend about it, like, 'I have no idea how I'm going to do this'. And she was literally like, 'You don't have to, and, by the way, you shouldn't.'" Renee ultimately opted to return to work because she suffers from career insecurity, in spite of her fame and success. The singer said: "I was like, 'This is what somebody's asking of me, so I can't not fulfil that, because that means I'm not working hard enough, and that means I don't want it enough'." Renee rose to prominence as Regina George in the Mean Girls Broadway musical. But the singer has had to adapt in order to become a success in the music industry. Renee - who also played Regina in the 2024 Mean Girls movie - explained: "Being a theatre girl, transitioning to pop music can be really difficult. "You go from singing your guts out, to trying to tailor that voice and that volume to a studio setting. "It was really hard for me, working out how to give the same quality of performance, but also pulling back 5,000 per cent. "But I realised that if I want to have a really successful pop career, I have to make music that doesn't use the same parts of my voice that I use live."
Sky News AU
a day ago
- Sky News AU
New South Park episode hilariously skewers Paramount over Trump settlement
Sky News host James Morrow has reacted to a hilarious clip from South Park which pokes fun at the US President and Paramount's settlement with Donald Trump. 'The South Park episode everyone is talking about, the one where South Park takes on Donald Trump,' he said. 'Here's their take on CBS's 60 Minutes reporting on Trump in the wake of their settling a lawsuit filed by the president after that whole scandalously edited Kamala Harris interview they ran. 'The whole episode is hilarious by the way; it takes the mickey out of just about everyone on all sides.'
