Eileen Fulton

Eileen Fulton, born Margaret Elizabeth McLarty on September 13, 1933, in Asheville, North Carolina, was an American actress, singer, and author. Her father was a Methodist minister whose work required the family to relocate frequently, with the McLartys living at various times in Mount Holly, Winston-Salem, Boone, Belmont, and Marion. Fulton attended Greensboro College, where she majored in music and studied dramatics, performing in productions including Candide and a staging of James Thurber's The 13 Clocks. After graduation, rather than accept a position her father arranged with a local church choir, she chose to pursue a professional career in New York.

Fulton made her professional acting debut in The Lost Colony in Manteo, North Carolina, before relocating to New York in 1956 to attend the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where she studied with Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg. To support herself during this period, she worked selling hats at Macy's, modeled, and posed for cover photographs for True Confessions magazine. She adopted the stage name Eileen Fulton and was cast in the drama film Girl of the Night in 1960, co-starring with Anne Francis.

That same year, on May 18, 1960, Fulton originated the role of Lisa Grimaldi, then known as Lisa Miller, on the CBS daytime drama As the World Turns. She played the character almost continuously for fifty years, until the series concluded on September 17, 2010. In the character's early years, Lisa was married to Dr. Bob Hughes, played by Don Hastings, a relationship that ended before the character went on to seven additional marriages. Fulton became the first soap opera actress to hire a publicist, and the character of Lisa generated intense audience reaction, at times prompting viewers to confront Fulton on the street. She once refused to film a scene in which Lisa was spanked, citing concerns about the glorification of spousal abuse. In 1965, head writer Irna Phillips created a primetime spin-off series, Our Private World, centered on the character of Lisa, which aired on CBS from May 5 to September 10 of that year before cancellation.

In 1962, Fulton appeared on Broadway in the original production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, replacing Melinda Dillon in the role of Honey at the Billy Rose Theatre. During this period she was simultaneously performing in As the World Turns, which aired live until 2:00 p.m., leaving her a thirty-minute window to travel from the CBS studios to the theater and change into costume before her character's entrance, which came approximately twenty minutes into the first act. She also performed Off-Broadway in The Fantasticks during this time, appearing in that production's evening performances. Her additional theater credits include Abe Lincoln in Illinois with Hal Holbrook, as well as Many Loves, Any Wednesday, Sabrina Fair, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Nite Club Confidential, Plaza Suite, It Had To Be You, The Owl and the Pussycat, Goodbye Charlie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

The role of Lisa was recast on multiple occasions during Fulton's absences from As the World Turns. Pamela King assumed the part during a 1964 departure, Lynn Rogers filled in during a period in the late 1970s, and Betsy von Furstenberg took over following Fulton's exit in April 1983, with Fulton returning on August 3, 1984. In the late 1960s, Fulton had a clause written into her contract stipulating that her character could not become a grandmother, a provision that became widely known among the show's audience. Jane Powell temporarily assumed the role in 1990 while Fulton underwent gynecological surgery, and again briefly in 1993 and 1994, with Maeve McGuire filling in during a 1992 absence. CBS provided Fulton with a bodyguard on more than one occasion due to threats from viewers.

In the late 1980s, Fulton authored a series of six murder-mystery novels: Take One for Murder, Death of a Golden Girl, Dying for Stardom, Lights, Camera, Death, A Setting for Murder, and Fatal Flashback. She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1988 and received the Editor's Award at the Soap Opera Digest Awards in 1991. She co-authored two autobiographies, How My World Turns in 1970 and As My World Still Turns in 1995, the latter marking her thirty-fifth anniversary on As the World Turns. She was nominated for a Soap Opera Digest Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in 1996 and inducted into the Soap Opera Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2004, she received a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on the series.

Fulton also wrote a fiction novel titled Soap Opera, loosely based on her experiences on As the World Turns. In the early 2000s, she performed a cabaret act regularly at the West Bank Cafe in Manhattan and brought the show to the Cinegrill in Los Angeles. A centerpiece of her cabaret performances was "As If We Never Said Goodbye" from Sunset Boulevard, performed alongside a slideshow tribute to her years on As the World Turns. She headlined CabaretFest 2003 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Fulton released a debut album, The Same Old World, on the Pan label in 1970. She died on July 14, 2025.