Vale: Helen Wagner

US soapie actress Helen Wagner, who played ‘Nancy Hughes’ on As the World Turns for 54 years, has died aged 91.

Wagner held the Guinness World Record for playing the same role on television for the longest amount of time.

The cause of death was not reported.

Wagner began on As the World Turns in 1956 and was still a part of the cast in December 2009, when CBS announced its cancellation.

Her final appearance aired in April 2010, in an episode in which Julianne Moore, a series regular in the 1980s whose two half-sister characters played Wagner’s granddaughters, returned for a guest walk-on.

In a 1968 New York Times interview, Wagner called Nancy “a tentpole character.”

“Nothing ever happens to Nancy,” Wagner said. “She’s the one the others come and talk to.”

Source: Hollywood Reporter