Anthony Geary, General Hospital Star, Dead at 78

Anthony Geary, who played Luke Spencer on General Hospital, died at 78 in Amsterdam on December 14, TV Insider reports. He died from complications of a surgery he had three days ago. During his 28-year tenure in General Hospital, he won seven Daytime Emmy Awards, setting the record for most wins in the Leading Actor in a Drama Series. His character Luke Spencer, a bad-boy criminal with ties to the mafia, was paired with Laura Webber (Genie Francis) in a controversial relationship because in one episode, Luke sexually assaulted Laura, and despite this, she fell in love with him; in recent years, Francis doesn’t defend the storyline. The two became a power couple on the show through their whirlwind romance. But to Geary, it was exhausting to live up to the expectations of Luke in real life. “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,” Geary told the Toronto Star, per New York Times. “He was violent, he was greedy, he was arrogant and a chauvinist. At the same time he was romantic and sensitive.”

Francis remembered her co-star the morning after his death in several posts on X. She wrote, “No star burned brighter than Tony Geary. He was one of a kind. As an artist, he was filled with a passion for the truth, no matter how blunt, or even a little rude it might be, but always hilariously funny. He was the anti-hero, always so irreverent, but even the most conservative had to smile… He spoiled me for leading men for the rest of my life. I am crushed, I will miss him terribly, but I was so lucky to be his partner.”