Eileen Fulton, who starred as Lisa Grimaldi on “As The World Turns” from 1960 to 2010, died July 14, 2025, at age 91. Her obituary noted Fulton’s death came “after a period of declining health.”
Fulton was cast as Lisa Miller, who would eventually become Lisa Grimaldi, on the soap in 1960, in a performance that was one of the longest-running on a soap in American history. Her character, who was married eight times, was enormously popular and contributed to the show’s overall success.
Fulton graduated from Greensboro College with a degree in music and initially performed in the outdoor group The Lost Colony before moving to New York to pursue an acting career. While living in the city, she studied with Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg at the Neighborhood Playhouse and also took up dance lessons with Martha Graham.
Being cast on “As The World Turns” as a major break for Fulton. She was inducted into the Soap Opera Hall of Fame in 1998 and won a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.
She reflected on the character in a 1995 interview with Peter Anthony Holder. “Well, when I first started, I was a real live scheming conniving person. Not I was, I mean my character Lisa was. It was a wonderful character part,” Fulton said.
“This is why I’m an actor. I liked to create something different. I want to live different lives, so I do this in acting. That’s the whole joy of it. Creating something new.”
“So she was totally not like Eileen back then. But as the years went on and we changed many different writers, I didn’t have very much to do, so I decided to make her dippy. I’ve had great fun being dippy and now the writers who are here now say ‘Oh, she can really do an awful, bad girl, let’s bring back the old bad girl,’” she added. “So they’ve had me do wonderful things. I have loved every minute of it. Oh, and I will say that when Doug Marland was writing our show he really knew Lisa and gave me some wonderful stuff do to as well.”
Fulton’s stage career, which ran simultaneously to her soap opera performances, included roles in a Broadway production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and the off-Broadway rendition of “The Fantastiks.”
Fulton was born on September 13, 1933, in Asheville, North Carolina. She returned to the area in 2019 after retiring from acting and lived in Black Mountain.
She is survived by her brother, Charles Furman McLarty (Karen) of Black Mountain; niece Katherine Morris (David) and their children, Everly Ann Morris and Easton Lane Morris of Fort Mill, S.C.; and sister-in-law Chris Page McLarty of Camden, Maine. She was pre-deceased by her parents and her brother, James Fulton McLarty.
