THE NEW YORK TIMES – Anthony Geary, the actor best known for portraying Luke Spencer on the popular soap opera “General Hospital,” died in Amsterdam on Sunday. He was 78.
His death, in a hospital days after surgery, was confirmed by his sister Deann Geary. Mr. Geary portrayed the mafia-connected Luke on and off for decades beginning in the late-1970s, a nuanced role that required balancing the character’s darker tendencies and softer undertones.
Playing a self-important, street-savvy criminal, Mr. Geary would later tell The Toronto Star, was “taxing.”
“He was a grab bag of emotions and directions, a minor icon of anti-heroism in the ’80s, and in many ways represented a lot of what was bad with the decade,” Mr. Geary said. “He was violent, he was greedy, he was arrogant and a chauvinist. At the same time he was romantic and sensitive.”
The character’s whirlwind — and controversial — romance in the 1980s with Laura Webber (Genie Francis), became a cultural touch point.
Luke and Laura’s deeply complicated history included Luke raping Laura in an episode that aired on Oct. 5, 1979, though she would fall in love with him later — a story line that both captivated audiences and infuriated some who said the show glorified sexual assault. (In recent years, Ms. Francis has criticized the story line.)
The show soon turned Mr. Geary and Ms. Francis into stars. Soap operas were not typically structured as star vehicles, but in 1981, the duo landed on the cover of Newsweek with the headline, “TV’s Hottest Show.”
Their wedding episode became the most watched episode of a daytime drama in history, and Mr. Geary won his first Daytime Emmy in 1982, the first of eight in his career.
The onscreen relationship with Laura consumed Mr. Geary’s life offscreen, too. He and Ms. Francis became celebrities, widely recognizable and deluged by fan mail …
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