Eileen Fulton, best known for her decadeslong role as “bad girl” Lisa Miller on the soap opera โAs The World Turns,โ has died.
Fulton died July 14, 2025, in Asheville, North Carolina โafter a period of declining health,โ per her obituary shared by Groce Funeral Home. She was 91.
The actor was born Margaret Elizabeth McLarty in Asheville to parents James B. McLarty, a minister, and Margaret Glenn McLarty, a public school teacher.
Fulton graduated from Greensboro College in 1956 where she received a degree in music. She went on to perform the drama โThe Lost Colonyโ in Manteo, North Carolina before she moved to New York City to pursue a career in acting.
In New York, she studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse with legends Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg and dance with Martha Graham. She took on the stage name Eileen Fulton and in 1960, was cast in the movie โGirl of the Nightโ with Anne Francis.
Speaking to The Washington Post in June 1990, she told the publication about her career aspirations when she was younger, explaining, โI dreamed of being the greatest actress on Broadway.โ
โI love to sing,โ she later added. โI love to make the audience cry. Of course, then I have to cheer them up.โ
The same year she was cast in โGirl of the Night,โ she received her career-defining role as Lisa Miller on the CBS soap opera โAs the World Turns.โ Fulton portrayed Miller, regarded as one of the first bad girls of daytime television, for nearly 50 years, including through all eight of the characterโs marriages, with brief interruptions until the series was canceled in 2010.
Despite Fulton telling NPR in September 2010 that viewers โhatedโ her character, fans eventually came around to Miller. Fulton even said that her character inspired people to name their own children Lisa.
โI was very surprised when I went on the road years ago to find this out,โ she explained. โIt was the beginning of feminismโwomen taking up for themselves and going out into the world. Lisa became a businesswoman. She stuck up for herself. She was not somebody to be trampled on.โ
Fulton was inducted into the Soap Opera Hall of Fame in 1998 and later received a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.
Outside of her work on โAs The World Turns,โ Fulton also appeared on Broadway in โWhoโs Afraid of Virginia Woolfโ and in the off-Broadway musical โThe Fantasticks.โ For years, she also performed a cabaret act around New York City and Los Angeles, and authored numerous books, including two autobiographies and a series of mystery novels.
Fulton retired in 2019 and relocated to Black Mountain, North Carolina.
The actor was married three times and is survived by her brother, Charles Furman McLarty, niece Katherine Morris and her children Everly and Easton, and sister-in-law Chris Page McLarty.
