Anthony Geary
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General Hospital celebrates its 45th birthday today. And that's no April Fool's joke.

Recently, veteran actor Anthony Geary spoke to Entertainment Weekly about his life on the series...

Entertainment Weekly: Did you have any idea at the beginning that your character would take on the life that it did?
Anthony Geary: No. [Laughs] I first came on to do 13 weeks and that was all I expected to do. It just sort of grew out of that. For a while, after being on for the first five years, I was really anxious to get off and do other things. And I found out that the impact was such that it was difficult to do much else.

When I finally came back in '91, I came back as Luke's cousin [Bill Eckert] because I didn't want to play Luke. That really didn't work. The audience didn't want to see him and I was unhappy with that character, so we brought Luke back in 1993. And I've been very grateful for it ever since because it's been a very good ride.

EW: What have been your favorite arcs for the character?
Geary: Oh, jeez. There've been so many good ones. I always remember the very first Luke and Laura runaway as being really special. That is when they were married. It was after the rape and he'd stolen her away from Baldwin and they'd spent the summer together trying to solve the mystery of the left-handed boy and the black book, plus Frank Smith's mob.

That story was really special to me. It was full of all kinds of surprises and twists and turns. There was a cross-dressing hitman chasing us. We did a lot of location shots at that time. It was really the high point of General Hospital as far as I'm concerned. We were breaking the mold.

Read the full interview with Geary now.

TV Guide has come out with a list of the top 30 soap opera actors on TV. Here's a sampling of the top 10:

1. Tie: Anthony Geary (Luke Spencer, General Hospital), Susan Flannery (Stephanie Forrester, The Bold and the Beautiful)

3. Erika Slezak (Victoria Lord Davidson, One Life to Live)

4. Kim Zimmer (Reva Shayne, Guiding Light)

5. Michael E. Knight (Tad Martin, All My Children)

6. Michelle Stafford (Phyllis Summers Newman, The Young and the Restless)

7. David Canary (Adam/Stuart Chandler, All My Children)

8. Heather Tom (Katie Logan, The Bold and the Beautiful)

9. Maura West (Carly Snyder, As the World Turns)

10. Jane Elliot (Tracy Quartermaine Spencer, General Hospital)

Tony Geary (Luke) returns from his summer vacation during the week of October 8 on General Hospital.

Of course, he won’t be pleased at the recent slew of events affecting Lulu.

Anthony Geary has merely won the second most Daytime Emmy Awards of all-time.

So most fans probably think they know this long-time, respected actor quite well. While they may be correct, here are a few fun, fast facts about the General Hospital star that may surprise you:

• He co-starred with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas.
• Takex pride in claiming to be the world's oldest hip-hop dancer.
• His regretx in life? Not finishing school and not getting a Ph.D. in theater.
• He received a Cindy Award as a producer for the drama Sound of Sunshine, Sound of Rain, a children's story for public radio.

Finally, the man who make Luke such a well-known character does hope to be remember not just for this one role. As he said in 1999:

I guarantee you, in my obituary, it will say, 'Tony Geary — Luke on General Hospital — died today.' That was really hard for me, because my whole reason for being an actor, my whole dream about it, was that I'd have an opportunity to dissolve into a million personalities. So what I've done instead is I've refused to let Luke be anything but a million different personalities.

If I must play him, then he must serve me, as well. So long as I live, he will not be a sofa cushion.