Snakkle Looks Back as the Forever Queen of Daytime TV, Susan Lucci, Celebrates Her 65th!

Susan Lucci was born and raised in Scarsdale, New York, to French and Italian parents. She pursued a drama degree at Marymount College and after graduation went to New York City to become an actress. Lucci’s early gigs consisted of day-player roles, extra parts for films shooting in the city, and understudy for some Off-Broadway plays. But her luck changed with an audition in 1970…

Lucci was called in to audition for the role of Erica Kane in a new soap opera shooting in New York City called All My Children. She bagged the part of Kane, the ambitious and haughty bad girl of Pine Valley, Pennsylvania. Kane quickly marries and becomes the bored wife of Dr. Jeff Martin (Charles Frank), until she breaks out of her traditional suburban role to become a model.

Audiences loved to hate the troublemaker Kane, who was equally ruthless with her rivals in love and those impeding her career aspirations. One of the first feminist role models on daytime TV, Kane shifted into the "heroine-vixen" role on the soap and became the central figure in many of the interweaving story lines on All My Children. In 1978, Lucci was nominated for her first Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series Emmy. She became so popular with women, Lucci got gigs outside of the show pitching housewife-friendly products like Riunite wine. (Remember that wallet-friendly libation?!)

Around the same time Lucci got the role that would define her career, Susan also met the man who would be by her side for every career high and low: Austrian businessman Helmut Huber. On September 13, 1969, Lucci and Huber married, and they’ve maintained a successful union for 42 years (a miracle in showbiz!). They have two children and now are the proud grandparents of three grandchildren.

Susan Lucci suffered through an 18-year losing streak before she was finally able to take home an Emmy statue for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for playing Erica Kane. It became a running joke in the media, and was parodied even by Lucci herself, that she couldn’t win that damn award. However, in 1999, Lucci broke the bad-luck mojo and walked onstage at the Daytime Emmys, lauded by a four-minute standing ovation from her peers and show colleagues.

Susan and Helmut’s daughter, Liza Huber, followed in her mother’s footsteps and also became a soap opera actress. In 1999, Huber was cast as Gwen Hotchkiss on the NBC soap Passions. She’s since retired from the limelight to raise her own family.

In early 2011, Susan Lucci finally released her much-anticipated memoir, All My Life. The autobiography charts her earliest inspirations (including her dad), her early career, working on All My Children, and her behind-the-scenes life with Helmut and her children.