Every actor needs their fans. They’re the ones that sustain a performer’s career. But there is a dark side to fame. Some fans take their loyalty – or dissatisfaction – to the extreme. Sadly, soap stars aren’t immune to this danger.
Who Is The Soap Star In Question?
All of these actors are either one-time stars of long-gone daytime programs – like As the World Turns – or they are alums of one of the four remaining daytime dramas – The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless.
All of them can claim that dealt with their fair share of persistent fans and hostile detractors. But only one of these actors was systematically targeted by a mentally ill stalker whose actions forced them into a brief retirement.
But who can that actor be? Is it Eileen Fulton (ex-Lisa Miller Hughes, ATWT), Andrea Evans (ex-Tawny Moore, BB), Robin Strasser (ex-Vivian Alamain, DAYS), or Max Ehrich (ex-Fenmore Baldwin, YR)?
Eileen Fulton
During its heyday, ATWT was home to a specific breed of character: the superbitch. And that archetype was most suitably embodied by North Carolina native Eileen Fulton. For some fans of the soap, however, it was hard to distinguish between Fulton the actress, and Lisa the character whom she played.
Fulton became the receiver of vicious hate mail and even physical attacks and soon she began to seriously fear for her safety. In response, executives at CBS hired a bodyguard to protect their star and ensure that she would arrive and depart the studio without incident. Luckily, Fulton never felt the need to stymie her daytime career.
Robin Strasser
By the very late 1960s and into the 1970s, Fulton’s Lisa underwent a transformation – less outright bitchery and more put-upon heroine. Enter Another World’s social-climbing minx Rachel Davis.
That shady lady from the wrong side of the tracks was played by Robin Strasser, a graduate of the Yale University School of Drama, who quickly picked up the discarded baton of most hated (or most loved to hate) daytime performer.
Strasser was accosted in the street for “her” transgressions against the Matthews family – Rachel had married Russ but she was cuckolding him in favor of businessman Steven Frame – and not even the apartment that she shared with real-life husband Larry Luckinbill was off-limits.
Phone calls at all hours of the night from irate viewers resulted in the young couple losing sleep and remaining frazzled. And when Strasser learned that she was pregnant, she worried that an assault from a viewer or the continued stress at home would result in a miscarriage. Soon after, she and Larry decamped for a new abode – with an unlisted number. But Strasser continued to act.
Max Ehrich
After a particularly harrowing incident involving an overzealous fan-turned-stalker – during which a gun of some kind was produced and used in a threatening manner – Ehrich briefly went into hiding accompanied only by a hired bodyguard. However, the actor continued to act after the incident.
Andrea Evans
Evans’s reign as Tina Lord Roberts – One Life to Live’s premiere scheme queen – came to an abrupt end in 1990. Rumors at the time indicated that the actress had left the soap in order to pursue other acting endeavors… but the truth was far darker.
Instead, Evan had abandoned her acting career in order to put as much distance between herself and the mentally ill Russian immigrant who had been stalking her since the fall of 1987.
The man – later identified as a paranoid schizophrenic who had also stalked Ronald Reagan – had accosted the actress inside the lobby of OLTL’s Manhattan studio and later slit his wrist outside the building. At the psychiatric hospital, he listed Evans as his next of kin. Death threats – some of them written in the man’s blood – soon followed.
The final indignity for Evans was the man’s eventual arrest – he had been caught outside the Secretary of State’s office carrying a meat cleaver and a picture of the actress. Soon after that incident, Evans (semi) retired from acting. Between 1990 and 1999 she appeared in two projects – A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994) and Ice Cream Man (1995).
So if you guessed that the soap star in question was Andrea Evans – who did eventually return to acting on a permanent basis in 1999, landing the role of Tawny on BB on and off until 2011 – then you were absolutely correct!
