A Year of Farewells: Remembering the Familiar Faces We Lost in 2025 – the 3rd, 9th, and 15th will make you cry
Leslie Charleson
The daytime world lost an icon on January 12 when Leslie Charleson, the beloved daytime star who spent more than four decades playing Dr. Monica Quartermaine on GH, passed away at the age of 79 due to complications from a long illness. “Just to have that family established was the best thing in the world,” Charleson said of the Q clan in a 2016 interview with Digest. “They made them volatile and unique and rich and funny and wonderful, and you can’t ask for anything more than that!”
Before landing in Port Charles, Charleson made her television debut as Pam on A Flame In The Wind in 1964, moved to As The World Turns in 1966 as Alice Whipple, and starred as Iris Donnelly on Love Is A Many Splendored Thing from 1967-70.
Denise Alexander
Beloved daytime actress Denise Alexander died on March 5 at the age of 85 of natural causes, according to her stepson. In addition to her long-running roles as DAYS’s Susan Hunter Martin (1966-73) and GH’s Lesley Webber (which she initially played from 1973 to 1984, then again from 1996-2009), Alexander’s soap stints included Lois Adams on The Clear Horizon (1960), Emily Sanders on Ben Jerrod (1963), Lorna Hill on GH (1965) and Mary McKinnon on AW (1986-89). As she made one final GH appearance in 2013 for the soap’s 50th anniversary, Alexander told Digest, “What I love the most is, there hasn’t been a single time they called that I couldn’t go back. I was traveling the world, producing and developing things, and yet with all of that, I never got a call where I couldn’t say yes. It’s as if it was ordered by the unJames Hought
Tristan Rogers
Following a battle with lung cancer, Australian soap superstar Tristan Rogers passed away on August 15 at the age of 79. In 1980, he originated the role of Robert Scorpio on General Hospital, on which he last appeared in July. Reflecting on the 1980s heyday of the show and his own blossoming celebrity, Rogers remarked to Soap Opera Digest in 2013, “We really were the center of the universe. Every week, the ratings went up and this trolley of champagne would come out on the set. It was just a wonderful place to be. At the time we didn’t see that, but I look back on that now and it truly was our blinding moment in the sun.” The actor ended his first GH run in 1982, but returned in 1995, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2013-14, 2015-16, 2018, and again beginning in 2019, with his last episode airing in July 2025. Rogers also appeared as Scorpio on GH: Night Shift in 2008 and starred on Y&R as Colin Atkinson (2010-12, 2014-17, with a final appearance in 2019). Known for the dry wit he lent to his GH character, Rogers is survived by wife Teresa and their children, son Cale and daughter Sara Jane.
Anthony Geary
Eight-time Daytime Emmy winner Anthony Geary — who played GH’s iconic Luke Spencer — died at the age of 78 on December 14. The beloved actor, who had moved to Amsterdam after retiring from acting in 2015, passed away following complications stemming from a planned surgery. Geary’s daytime debut came in 1971 with the recurring role of David Lockhart on NBC’s Bright Promise, and he spent six months on Y&R as George Curtis. But it was his role of antihero Luke Spencer, which he began playing in late 1978, that catapulted Geary to soap superstardom.
After exiting the soap in 1983, Geary returned for a guest arc alongside Genie Francis’s Laura in 1984. In 1991, he returned once more, but this time as Luke’s lookalike cousin, Bill Eckert. When Francis agreed to return to the show in 1993, Bill was killed off, and Geary stepped back into Luke’s boots, playing the fan favorite until he retired. The actor then made a cameo appearance in 2017 to usher Jane Elliot’s Tracy off the canvas. Geary is survived by his husband, Claudio Gama.
