Eileen Herlie (born Eileen Herlihy on March 8, 1920) is a Scottish-American actress. She was born to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother in Glasgow, Scotland. She was married and divorced once, but has no children. Herlie was trained as a theatre actress, but her first big film break was being cast by Laurence Olivier in his 1947 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. She played Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, despite the fact that she was 13 years younger than Olivier, who played her son, Hamlet.
After this film Herlie continued to make sporadic film appearances, but remained primarily in the theatre. In 1960 she was nominated for a Tony Award as 'Best Actress in a Musical' for Take Me Along, in which she played opposite Jackie Gleason.
In 1976, Herlie made the move to television soap operas in the role of Myrtle Fargate on All My Children. She has been a contract player on the soap ever since. In the 1980s Herlie was nominated for three consecutive Daytime Emmy Awards (1984, 1985 and 1986). She became close friends with fellow cast member Louis Edmonds, and spoke at his funeral in 2001.
Until the late 1990s, Herlie was one of the few actresses to ever play the same character on three different soaps. In 1993 she played Myrtle on the All My Children sister-soap Loving. In December 2000 she played Myrtle in crossover appearances on the soap opera One Life to Live, where a 'Who's the Daddy?' storyline was playing out on all four ABC soaps (All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, and the now cancelled Port Charles).
Herlie had two younger sisters, Geraldine and Catherine. Both are deceased.
