In a new memoir, Susan Lucci ’68, the Emmy Award-winning “Queen of Daytime Television,” reflects on her blessings and hurdles—celebrating life and love while taking readers through her journey to remake herself after losing her husband, Helmut Huber, in 2022.
“I have always had a love of performing, singing, dancing, and theater,” she writes in La Lucci (Blackstone Publishing, 2026), which includes dozens of never-before-seen photos. “But the reality of loss that we, as human beings, all experience doesn’t always get tied up in a neat little bow. Sometimes … life is just not a musical.”
A 1968 graduate of Marymount College, which later became part of Fordham University, Lucci played Erica Kane on All My Children for 41 years, from the show’s debut in 1970 until its original network finale in 2011—making her the show’s longest-serving cast member. And after a record-setting 19 consecutive nominations, she won her first Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in 1999.
In her acceptance speech, she thanked her “great teachers,” including longtime Marymount professor Ron Weyand, and her husband, Helmut Huber, “who has been with me every step of the way.”
In La Lucci, which she wrote with Laura Morton, she shares that after Helmut’s death, she felt like her “ghost light”—the single, freestanding bulb left burning on a stage or set overnight—had gone out.
“After he passed, I thought I’d never get my light back again,” she writes. “But I also knew I had to make a choice and somehow find the courage to put one foot in front of the other. …For a long time, nothing mattered, and then I noticed there were more happy days than sad. … I started to see a glimmer of hope that maybe someday I’d once again find my light. And it became my quest.”
Light now regained, Lucci is starring opposite Keanu Reeves in Outcome, a dark comedy streaming on Apple TV+, as his mother.
Watch her recent appearance on Good Morning America to learn more about the movie and her memoir.
