Soap opera icon Eileen Fulton, best known for her portrayal of Lisa Grimaldi in As the World Turns for nearly 50 years, died on July 14, 2025, at the age of 91. While her on-screen character was a glamorous, oft-married matriarch with a tumultuous love life, Fulton’s real-life story was different in several ways, particularly when it came to children.Eileen Fulton was born Margaret Elizabeth McLarty on September 13, 1933, in Asheville, North Carolina. She was the daughter of a Methodist minister and a schoolteacher. While Lisa’s storylines turned her into a soap opera icon, married and divorced a total of eight times, and getting caught up in innumerable scandals, Fulton’s personal life was rather subdued. She was married three times but had no children.Her first marriage was to Bill Cochrane in 1957, followed by a ten-year marriage to record producer Danny Fortunato in 1970; she divorced both. Her third marriage, to landscape architect Rick McMorrow in 1989, also ended in divorce. Despite having no children, she was close to her family, particularly her brother Charles, and niece Katherine, both of whom survive her.Eileen Fulton: soap star, broadway actress, and philanthropistAccording to The Hollywood Reporter, Eileen Fulton studied drama at Greensboro College, then moved to New York to pursue acting lessons under the guidance of legends like Sanford Meisner. Her breakthrough role as Lisa Miller on the long-running soap As the World Turns (1960–2010) established her as one of the first antiheroines in daytime TV history.Fulton’s career extended beyond soaps. She appeared on Broadway in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and off-Broadway in The Fantasticks, all while appearing on and off in As the World Turns. She also authored two autobiographies and a series of mystery novels.Given her character’s long-running storyline, Lisa Grimaldi, in her various marriages on As the World Turns, had several children and grandchildren. Fulton famously included, during the 1970s, a “granny clause” in her contract that delayed Lisa’s transition into a grandmother, concerned that it would age her out of dramatic plots.During an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2000, she said:“At that time, grandmothers had no romance at all — and I wasn’t about to let that happen to me.”In her later days, Fulton worked in philanthropy, endowing scholarships at Brevard College and Greensboro College with her parents’ names. She retired in 2019 and later settled in the River Arts District of Asheville, her hometown, where she lived until her death.Eileen Fulton's family has asked well-wishers to donate to the Reverend James B. McLarty Music Scholarship at Brevard College or to the Margaret Glenn McLarty Scholarship at Greensboro College, instead of sending flowers.