General Hospital celebrates its 45th birthday today. And that's no April Fool's joke.

Recently, veteran actor Anthony Geary spoke to Entertainment Weekly about his life on the series...

Entertainment Weekly: Did you have any idea at the beginning that your character would take on the life that it did?
Anthony Geary: No. [Laughs] I first came on to do 13 weeks and that was all I expected to do. It just sort of grew out of that. For a while, after being on for the first five years, I was really anxious to get off and do other things. And I found out that the impact was such that it was difficult to do much else.

When I finally came back in '91, I came back as Luke's cousin [Bill Eckert] because I didn't want to play Luke. That really didn't work. The audience didn't want to see him and I was unhappy with that character, so we brought Luke back in 1993. And I've been very grateful for it ever since because it's been a very good ride.

EW: What have been your favorite arcs for the character?
Geary: Oh, jeez. There've been so many good ones. I always remember the very first Luke and Laura runaway as being really special. That is when they were married. It was after the rape and he'd stolen her away from Baldwin and they'd spent the summer together trying to solve the mystery of the left-handed boy and the black book, plus Frank Smith's mob.

That story was really special to me. It was full of all kinds of surprises and twists and turns. There was a cross-dressing hitman chasing us. We did a lot of location shots at that time. It was really the high point of General Hospital as far as I'm concerned. We were breaking the mold.

Read the full interview with Geary now.

Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.