Leslie Charleson, Monica Quartermaine on General Hospital, Dies At 79

Leslie Charleson, the beloved daytime star who began her run as Dr. Monica Quartermaine on General Hospital over 47 years ago, has passed away at the age of 79 due to complications from a long illness.

A Life In Full

In a statement announcing the sad news, GH’s executive producer, Frank Valentini, wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of my dear friend and colleague, @lesliecharleson. Her enduring legacy has spanned nearly 50 years on @generalhospital alone and, just as Monica was the heart of the Quartermaine family, Leslie was a beloved matriarch of the entire cast and crew. I will miss our daily chats, her quick wit and incredible presence on set.” His post concluded, “On behalf of everyone at #GeneralHospital, my heartfelt sympathy goes out to her loved ones during this difficult time.”

Charleson was born on February 22, 1945 in Kansas City, Missouri. She made her television debut in 1964 on the soap A Flame In The Wind, where she played the character of Pam. In 1966, she moved over to As The World Turns as Alice Whipple. Her star truly began to rise when she was cast on Love Is A Many Splendored Thing. She played Iris Donnelly, whose sister, Laura, was played by Donna Mills (later Abby Cunningham on Knots Landing and Madeline Reeves on GH). Charleson’s stint there lasted from 1967-70.

From there, Charleson made her way to Los Angeles, and had no intention of continuing to work in daytime. In what would turn out to be her final interview, the actress told Soap Opera Digest in 2023, “I had decided I’d had enough of soaps; I was moving on.” Then Tom Donovan, who had been her producer on Love is a Many Splendored Thing, took over as the executive producer of GH and coaxed Charleson into coming aboard as Monica. The year was 1976, and GH had just decided to part ways with the actress who originally played Monica, Patsy Rahn.

She got off to a dramatic start, telling Digest in a 2022 interview celebrating her 45th anniversary on GH, “I started the show the day Elvis Presley died, and being such a huge fan, I of course was very upset driving to the studios, and then getting there I was told that they hoped I had brought my own wardrobe and makeup because there was a strike going on — and that was before I even got in the building. Then I got in the building and I realized that no one really liked me, because the girl playing Monica before me was very rudely fired.” Not only that, but Donovan was soon axed as EP, replaced by the legendary Gloria Monty. “He brought me in and then he promptly left; he ditched me!” she teased in a 2016 Digest interview.

Charleson got along famously with the legendarily tough-as-nails Monty, who she had known from her New York soap days and who had directed her, along with David Selby (ex-Quentin Collins, Dark Shadows; ex-Richard Canning, Falcon Crest) and Christopher Reeve (ex-Ben Harper, Love of Life), in a 1975 installment of the anthology series The Wide World of Mystery. “We had, from our days in New York, a relationship and a rapport,” Charleson noted to Digest in 2016 of Monty. “She was nuts, but I loved her!”

When Monty assumed the reins at GH, she elected to expand the Quartermaine family, which Monica had married into, bringing on Jane Elliot — another friend Charleson knew from working on East Coast-based soaps — as Tracy, Anna Lee as Lila and David Lewis as Edward. “Just to have that family established was the best thing in the world,” Charleson said in her 2016 interview. “They made them volatile and unique and rich and funny and wonderful and you can’t ask for anything more than that! They were created by brilliant Douglas Marland,” then the show’s head writer, “who I loved dearly. We lucked into a little gold mine.”

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Charleson on the GH set during her first year on the show.

In the the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Monica rekindled her affair with former lover Rick and believed that her son, Alan, Jr. (AJ) was actually the biological son of Rick and not Alan, one of the show’s most storied triangles was born. Charleson recalled to Digest in 2016, “We refer to that time as ‘Alan Stalks.’ One of the prop guys had left his script at home and his mother read it and she said to him, ‘I didn’t know there was a character named Alan Stalks!’ Because every time you would see Rick and Monica in dialogue, in parentheses, it would say, ‘Alan Stalks’ [laughs]. He kept shooting himself in the foot, the attic fell on him. Alan didn’t handle that too well! That was a fun time.”

Monica’s tempestuous marriage to Alan, played by the late Stuart Damon, survived that extramarital affair and many others; though they divorced in 1990, they remarried in 1991 and remained husband and wife until Alan’s death was scripted in 2007. She told Digest in 2023, “I met Stuart when I auditioned the Alan wannabes. He was by far the best—and not very hard on the eyes at all! We really got along. Our dressing rooms were next to each other, and we had a lot of good times, just talking.”

In the mid-1990s, Charleson was entrusted with carrying one of GH’s finest social issue storylines, when Monica was diagnosed with breast cancer. In 2023, Charleson noted, “Wendy [Riche, then-EP] and Claire [Labine, then head writer] were women in charge of the show and in charge of the breast cancer storyline. Interestingly enough, we had all either gone through it or knew someone close to us who had, so we all had a vested interest in keeping it honest and real. This was one of the first times the show got into [a medical story in such depth]—we stopped freezing the town or Lassa Fever and all of that. It was important and difficult and rewarding, because we all did our homework. I really wanted to portray it in the most honest, realistic way we could.” Her work in that storyline earned her a Daytime Emmy nomination as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (she had previously been nominated as Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series in 1980, 1982 and 1983).

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The Quartermaine family in 1997: (from l.) Wally Kurth as Ned, John Ingle as Edward, Stuart Damon as Alan, Charleson, Billy Warlock as AJ and Anna Lee (seated) as Lila.

Reflecting on her longevity with the show to Digest in 2016, Charleson acknowledged, “It has been quite a long run. I am just so pleased because, unlike some of the actors that have come and gone, and gone on to other soaps or other things, this has really been my home since I started here, way back then, hundreds of years ago. I am very grateful to keep working at something that I love to do, and I am certainly grateful that it has endured.”

Health concerns forced Charleson to take a step back from GH in recent years, and GH even temporarily recast Monica on a few occasions. The actress was in a wheelchair when she was last seen on the show in December 2023.

In addition to her years on daytime, Charleson appeared in some memorable projects outside of the genre. She did the George C. Scott film Day of the Dolphin in 1973, and had memorable guest spots on shows like Happy Days, The Rockford Files, Marcus Welby, M.D. and Emergency! and in later years, Friends, Dharma and Greg and Diagnosis: Murder. She also did a commercial for Pearl Drops Tooth Polish, which you can see here, and starred alongside Deidre Hall (Marlena, Days of Our Lives) and Colleen Zenk (Jordan, Young and Restless) in the 1993 television movie Woman on the Ledge.

Charleson, who was married to G. William Demms from 1988-91, was a passionate lover of animals and a dedicated equestrienne.

Digest sends its deepest condolences to Charleson’s family, friends, and colleagues.