Eileen Fulton

Eileen Fulton, an actress, singer and author whose long career on the daytime drama As The World Turns earned her a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award, died on July 14 in Asheville, N.C. after a period of declining health.

Fulton was born Margaret Elizabeth McLarty in Asheville on September 13, 1933. Her father, James B. McLarty, was a Methodist minister who served congregations in western North Carolina. Her mother, Margaret Glenn McLarty, was a public school teacher.

After graduating from Greensboro College with a bachelor’s degree in music in 1956, Fulton performed in the outdoor drama The Lost Colony in Manteo, N.C., before moving to New York to pursue her acting career, a move strongly supported by her parents.

Fulton studied acting with Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg at the Neighborhood Playhouse and later studied dance with Martha Graham. She began using the stage name Eileen Fulton and in 1960 was cast in the film Girl of the Night, co-starring with Anne Francis.

In 1960 she was cast in what would become the defining role of her career, portraying Lisa Miller on the CBS soap opera As The World Turns. The character would eventually be married eight times. Fulton played the role with only brief interruptions until the show was cancelled in 2010, making her one of the longest running soap opera actors in the United States. Fulton’s eagerness to play Lisa as a villainess contributed to the character’s popularity and therefore its longevity. She was inducted into the Soap Opera Hall of Fame in 1998 and was awarded a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.

For a time early in her career she not only was appearing in As The World Turns, which at that time was broadcast live, she was simultaneously appearing on Broadway in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and off-Broadway in the long-running musical The Fantasticks.

A talented writer and singer as well as an actress, Fulton performed a cabaret act for many years in venues around New York and Los Angeles. In 1970, she co-authored her first autobiography, How My World Turns. In 1995 she co-authored a second autobiography, As My World Still Turns, to celebrate her 35th anniversary on As the World Turns. She also authored a series of mystery novels.

Fulton retired in 2019 and moved to Black Mountain, N.C. 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.

Groce Funeral Home in Asheville is handling funeral arrangements. Services will be held at 3pm on Saturday, August 9 at Central United Methodist Church in Asheville, N.C. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the Reverend James B. McLarty Music Scholarship at Brevard College in Brevard, N.C., or the Margaret Glenn McLarty ’28 and Eileen Fulton Music Scholarship Fund at Greensboro College in Greensboro, N.C.