
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 28, 1990                   TAG: 9007280436
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: 13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MICHAEL E. HILL THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WORLD KEEPS TURNING FOR SOAP QUEEN

She stepped off the elevator precisely on time, and why wouldn't she be prompt? She was wearing two watches. Every auburn hair in place. Petite, trim and fit. No one would guess she is 56.

But anyone who watches daytime TV would instantly recognize her as Lisa from "As the World Turns" . . . Eileen Fulton in the real life that lies just over the often thin line between reality and the soaps.

Over eggs benedict - "Oh, this is sinful - I'm so glad we got it" - she was hardly the Lisa who made "bitch" a household word long before you could say it on television. She is a charmer - the Lisa, or Fulton, who has been a guest in millions of homes for 30 years.

The recollections came easily, like the three times she walked off the show "forever" - "The third time, I really meant it" - coming back each time, of course.

And there were times when her impetuosity as Eileen Fulton seemed to match her spontaneity as Lisa Hughes Eldridge Shea Colman McColl Mitchel, veteran of 37 love affairs and about a half-dozen marriages.

Like the time she and a husband - there have been three - were looking at property in New Mexico, thinking of acquiring a second home. "But then," she said, "we decided to get divorced instead."

Fulton is the daughter of a Methodist minister who moved the family to various churches while she was growing up. Her mother still lives in Asheville, N.C. Fulton's quest for the spotlight started early, like the time, she recalls, at age 2 when she interrupted church services with her rendition of "Shortening Bread." A spanking did not deter her.

By the time she finished a college music major, it was clear that the job her father had found for her working with a neighboring church choir just wouldn't do. Nothing but New York would do.

"I dreamed of being the greatest actress on Broadway," she said. There were voice lessons and acting lessons. Once, in acting class, the question was asked: Would an actor be prostituting him or herself by taking a job on a soap opera? The answer, she recalled, was: "No, you prostitute yourself when you don't do a good job, when you're not believable."

While Fulton's portrayal of Lisa is one of the longer-running roles in TV history, she has found time for other professional work. She has done theater work when her schedule on "As the World Turns" permits or during periods away from the show. She also loves to sing and can be found touring the country in her own cabaret show or working closer to home in the East Village of New York.

But what she does mainly is take "World's" CBS audience through the ups and downs of Lisa's life - the many romances, the spates of illness and other near-tragedies and personal conflicts.

by CNB