Actress Eileen Fulton Happy That ‘World Turns’ Fans Hate Her

There is a defining moment in every actor’s life when it’s clear you’ve MADE IT: a favorable review, your name in lights.

For soap diva Eileen Fulton, it was getting pummeled by a woman in a pink Chanel suit.

It happened 35 years ago in front of Lord & Taylor’s, shortly after Fulton began playing the scheming Lisa Miller on the CBS daytime soap, “As The World Turns.”

The woman approached and asked if she was Lisa. Fulton reached into her purse for a special fountain pen, ready to sign what she thought was going to be her first autograph, when the Chanel-clad lady suddenly began batting her with a pocketbook, screaming, “I hate you! I hate you!”

It was a glorious moment.

“That’s when I realized they really knew who I was,” Fulton said.

Long before Amanda, Erica or Alexis were beamed into our living rooms, Fulton was television’s No. 1 … er, that word-thatrhymes-with-witch.

“I was the original,” the perfectly coiffed actress says during a rehearsal break at the CBS Broadcast Center, where the soap is taped. “I truly was the first to make viewers care about these characters.”

And how devoted soap fans love to hate her!

Through the years, she’s received death threats, been forced to hire bodyguards and gotten dead fish in the mail, all because of Lisa’s antics.

To celebrate her 35th year on the soap, Fulton has written her second book - “As My World Still Turns” ($19.95, Birch Lane Press) - about her life on and off the small screen.

Penned with writers Desmond Atholl and Michael Cherkinian, Fulton shares behindthe-scenes tidbits about her life as the villainous Lisa, who has connived and suffered through six marriages, 52 lovers, three children, one phantom fetus (don’t ask), madness and menopause.

Among her favorite memories was the time she almost died.

Fulton’s character was in a coma, the victim of yet another soap tragedy, and spent days inside an oxygen tent, slit up the back to allow her air.

One day, the producer decided the tent was too wrinkled and called for a new one. As Fulton did her scene (the soap was then aired live), she suddenly began getting dizzy and realized the prop man had forgotten to slit the new tent.

“There I am in an airtight tent turning blue,” Fulton says, “I’m an actress to the end and I know I dare not open my eyes or I’ll ruin the story line for months to come.”

She was rescued during a commercial break and later received much fan mail complimenting her on how realistic she looked.

“If they only knew how close I had actually come,” she says with a laugh.

The book offers other behind the scenes gaffes, like the time the cast got looped on cherries jubilee, and the coffee enema scene involving a reluctant child actor.

She’s also candid about her own life, which she freely admits is a soap unto itself.

Fulton, 62, who has had three failed marriages, writes that between her real persona and the fictional one, “we’ve racked up more matrimonial miles than Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor combined.”

She describes the breakup of her second, 10-year marriage to record producer Danny Fortunato, including how she sneaked in and out of the television studio in disguises because she was afraid of him.

Still not convinced that life is one big soap opera?

Fulton describes the last time she saw husband No. 2 (after cutting up his credit cards in a Manhattan restaurant) in a scene worthy of her alter-ego:

“Danny followed me out, his body slightly twitching from the tears he was once again trying to hold back. As the driver pulled away from the curb and the car slowly joined the Fifth Avenue traffic, I watched Danny’s face grow smaller and smaller, until I couldn’t recognize it anymore.”

Her native Carolina drawl still apparent despite more than three decades as a New Yorker, Fulton is an actress with a capital “A” - and admits she has been all her life.

Margaret Elizabeth McCarty - her real name - made her debut at age 2, when she stole her Southern preacher daddy’s pulpit during a solemn Good Friday service and offered a rousing rendition of “Shortenin’ Bread.”

Three times she has left the show to pursue a stage and singing career, but the lure of nasty Lisa has always pulled her back.

Though other soap stars, such as former “General Hospital” star Demi Moore, have moved on to the silver screen, Fulton has no regrets.

“I’m really happy with what I’ve done,” says Fulton, who like fellow daytime star Susan Lucci has never won an Emmy. “Doing this has allowed me to have a built-in audience probably bigger than most movie stars.”

Besides, she reasons, where else can a preacher’s daughter be so bad yet be loved - or hated - by so many?

“I’m doing what I want to do,” the soap diva says, “and still loving every minute of it.”