Still coming out of her bottle

Back in 1981, Genie Francis was gracing the cover of every magazine and tabloid as the fabled Laura of the Luke-and-Laura romance from daytime’s “General Hospital.”

Thirty million viewers tuned in to watch their wedding, which landed the couple on the cover of Newsweek.

But the bride did not live happily ever after. Francis was already snagged in a web of self-destruction when she was told that the show’s producer considered her a mere appendage to her co-star.

“It happened in one moment. … I left the show, bam! I was done,” she says of her departure the following year.

Now, after filming “The Note” – a story of reconciliation that airs tonight at 9 on the Hallmark Channel (cable channel 77) – she’d like to apologize to her fans.

“I’m sorry for leaving you so abruptly, for not taking into account the feelings of the people who helped Laura truly take on a life of her own,” says Francis, 45.

“It was the decision of a young, impetuous girl, and the woman she has become asks for your forgiveness.”

Francis, painfully timid as a kid, had started on “General Hospital” when she was 14.

“I was very shy in school and having trouble getting on with the other kids, and I elected to be a hall monitor so I could eat lunch alone,” she says.

“I went from hall monitor to star and never really had the opportunity to work that out.”

At 17, she began using cocaine. After several missteps she kicked the habit seven years later.

“A big part of my life got wiped away there,” Francis says. “I never went clubbing because by the time I was old enough to go to a club I was sober. So I missed that whole thing. It’s just a strange way to grow up.”

In “The Note,” Francis plays a troubled journalist who discovers a note written by an airline passenger during the last moments of his life. Her quest to find the person the note was meant for changes her life.

In real life, Francis has been happily married for nearly 20 years to actor-director Jonathan Frakes (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”), whom she met when they made the miniseries “Bare Essence” together. They have two children, a boy, 13, and a girl, 10.

Francis returned to “General Hospital” when she was 31, leaving again 10 years later when producers reneged on a promise to give her the summers off.

“It was too late in life to be made a slave. It was just not going to happen,” she says, shaknig her head.

Now Francis works when she wants. But she still battles her timidity.

“My nature is shy, and it’s hard to be shy,” she says. “I have social anxiety, and sometimes it’s worse than others. But it is a hard way to live, and I wish I could be gregarious and comfortable like my husband.

“That’s probably a big part of why I chose him. He has that, and I was surprised he chose me because I was the wallflower of all those women in ‘North and South.’ … I was surprised that he – Mambo King – wanted me.”

The birthday bunch

Actor/producer/director Maximilian Schell is 77. Actor David Carradine is 71. Actor James MacArthur (“Hawaii Five-O”) is 70. Musician Gregg Allman is 60. Actress Kim Basinger is 54. Actress Teri Hatcher is 43. Singer Sinead O’Connor is 41. Actor Dominic Monaghan is 31. Actor Ian Somerhalder is 29.