Get the latest gossip
Leslie Charleson, ‘General Hospital’ Icon Who Played Monica Quartermaine, Dies at 79
Soap Opera icon, Leslie Charleson, best known as Monica Quartermaine on "General Hospital," died Sunday morning after a long illness. She was 79.
Although her primetime time appearances were plentiful, she returned to the world of soap operas in 1977, when she was hired to replace Patsy Rahn as Monica Bard on “General Hospital.” Charleson used to joke that she wasn’t received with open arms by many of the cast and crew, who were upset that her predecessor was given the heave-ho. During her 40-plus years on “GH,” Charleson’s Monica was part of one of daytime’s biggest and most popular love triangles (Rick/Monica/Alan), has given audiences doses of both comedy (she had a thing for slapping people and was as a member of the super-wealthy, perennially quarrelsome and dysfunctional Quartermaine family) and drama (including surviving breast cancer and the loss of three children), and has been shot and held at gunpoint more than once. I remember times at her beautiful house, when she’d let her turtle wander in her luscious backyard and it would disappear into the bushes; when we’d sit in the kitchen nook and gossip; when I would tease her about her love of Elvis Presley and the Eagles.
Or read this on Variety
