Legendary soap opera star Denise Alexander dead at 85

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Veteran soap opera actress Denise Alexander has died at the age of 85.

Alexander died March 5 of natural causes at the home of a nephew in Colorado, her stepson, Anthony Colla, told The Hollywood Reporter. 

The Daytime Emmy nominee played Susan Hunter Martin on NBC’s Days of Our Lives from 1966 to 1973 before getting an offer to portray Lesley Webber on ABC’s General Hospital. It was a role that lasted nearly 50 years, with her last onscreen appearance coming in 2021.

When she joined the show as Webber, Alexander became part of a love triangle along with with Chris Robinson’s Rick Webber and Leslie Charleson’s Monica Quartermaine.

“General Hospital went to number one for the first time during the Rick and Lesley and Monica triangle storyline,” she told We Love Soaps, according to PEOPLE. 

Alexander departed General Hospital following a contract dispute in 1984 and joined rival soap Another World. In 1996 her character was brought back from the dead.

“I was sad when I left the show,” she told We Love Soaps. “When you have played a character that long and had fun with it, you can feel the fan’s sorrow. I missed the character, and it’s a fun thing for me that she came back to life. It’s a character I know, and there’s still a few people I know there.”

General Hospital executive producer Frank Valentini hailed Alexander in a social media statement.  

“I am so very sorry to hear of Denise Alexander’s passing,” Valentini wrote. “She broke barriers on screen and off portraying Dr. Lesley Webber — one of the first female doctors on daytime television — for nearly five decades. It meant so much to have her reprise her role in recent years, and I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with her. On behalf of the entire General Hospital family, I extend my heartfelt sympathies to her family, friends, and longtime fans. May she rest in peace.”

Days of Our Lives star Susan Seaforth Hayes also took to social media to pay tribute to Alexander.

“Denise Alexander was a friend to treasure and an actress to applaud. She was well established on Days when I joined the cast as Julie #4 (a replacement for 4 previous actresses). She watched Billy and I fall madly in love and, being a romantic lady herself, cheered us on,” she wrote, sharing a photo of herself posing alongside her husband Billy Hayes and Alexander. 

“Such happy memories of her years in Salem and her great success on General Hospital. We both began as child actors, both had strong mothers and both were raised as Christian Scientists in our early years. I was grateful for her wisdom, taste, humor, and goodness every time I saw her. It was never enough. And my love for her will never be over.” 

Soap fans shared their condolences on Valentini’s post, with many hailing her for being a trailblazer in the genre.

“I am so sad to hear this, she was a wonderful actress and a huge part of the show’s history. The last time she was on, you could see her health had declined but that did not stop her delivering an A+ performance,” one fan wrote. “GH has lost a lot of its former stars in the last year. Although as a fan I did not personally know them, it felt as if I lost some one I was close to. RIP lovely lady.”

Alexander got her acting start as a child, appearing first on radio before moving to television.

“There was television, there was radio, I did theatre, I did everything there was to do, and it seemed natural,” she told We Love Soaps, PEOPLE reported. “Now when I look back, I think, ‘How lucky was I?’ — because a lot of people didn’t have those experiences.”

In that same 2010 interview, Alexander opened up on what her life was like as one of the biggest daytime stars.

“The audience would surround your car and scream when you would try to drive away from some appearance,” she said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Financially, it was great. And I didn’t have to go out on audition and be told I was too young, too old, too short, too fat, too boring, nothing. It was a great place to be and a great job and a great gift for an actor. And everybody got famous and that was fun.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com