Okay, she knows it's not exactly the greatest work of art ever produced. But at least Stephanie Beacham, whose success in Connie led to a starring part as Alexis Carrington's cousin, Sable, in Dynasty II: The Colbys, has gone from rags to bitches without letting her brain become air-locked with the simpering clichés of her trade.

"The dialogue is either a wince, or it puts you to sleep," she admitted about the show she calls New Cobblers. "I find it so extraordinary that, with the amount of money that is spent on the look of everything, the scripts are so poor yet the stories are amazing."

She had been in Hollywood for six months - earning a reported £17,000 a week to co-star with Charlton Heston and Barbara Stanwyck - but reviews of The Colbys, now on BBC1, had been mixed at best, and there was talk that the series would be cancelled.

"I didn't expect the critics to like it," she said, running an inch-long and exquisitely manicured, velvet-polished nail through her auburn hair. She fixed her smouldering brown eyes on the warm Pacific Ocean a few yards from the door of her rented house in Malibu. "But I'm very new here, and all I could hope for is good reviews for doing my end of the donkey. It's not my fault how the show is edited. That sounds very un-team spirited, but I really am surprisingly uncynical about the programme. I'm protective towards The Colbys.

"Chuck (Charlton Heston) is very involved and re-writes a lot of the dialogue. And Barbara says, 'What's this radio play we're doing today?' She thinks it is far too overstated, so I am hiding behind those two and making my own changes on some of the lines which I find frightfully difficult to say.

"They don't normally let that happen because people here are on amazing ego trips. Well, they see that I am not. I just like to say things that make sense.

"You expect to get knocked down when you do soap operas - but people keep watching anyway. It's like a fantasy novel without having to bother to turn the pages - good, healthy stuff about the miseries of the rich. I have been taken aback by how favourably people have responded to Sable. My agent phoned me the other day and said, "You've made it, madam. Someone just asked me for a Stephanie Beacham 'type'. That's nice, but my feet are so much on the ground that my ankles are in the mud. I've been imported for a job and it could all collapse overnight. Then I'd have to ask myself - am I Hollywood or just our Steff? The truth is that I have become a complete mixture of the two.

"In the last few weeks, I have realised that there might possibly be a place for me here whatever happens to The Colbys - and I have started buying an awful lot of stuff; a television, two answer-phones, a video, beds, a £150 Gucci ashtray.

"I don't think I have been extravagant, but that's what is interesting. My dear and over-publicised friend Martyn..." She paused, and then began to talk about her relationship with Martyn Stambridge, a 27-year-old actor who is 11 years younger than her and who she lived with for 16 months before going to America.

..."I do wish that everyone could understand that there are different definitions of friendship between human beings rather than 'on' or 'off'. You can actually forge friendships that last for many years, and Martyn never really thought we would marry, whatever frightful publicity there was in the papers.

"Anyway, as I was saying, one of my best friends, Mart, was here for a week and he said I had become extravagant. 'Well, darling, I have hardly bought anything,' I replied. 'Those jeans are new', he said. Well, for heaven's sake. 'And what about those three new pairs of boots?' But they're not smart. 'And how about those two cowboy shirts?' I needed them. 'You've bought a lot', he said. 'But, darling', I replied, 'that's nothing'.

"And I suppose I've been kidding myself. Yes, I have bought a ring with a few diamonds in it, only a little ring, and smallish diamonds. But it's true, isn't it, everything is possible in America? It's my fault I'm here, so I'm making the best of it and I adore living in southern California, that's the truth. I haven't missed London at all, it's so crazy here.

"I have a personal assistant! Are you kidding? I've never bothered with that sort of thing before and I've worked very hard, but in this town everyone telephones everyone all the time and leaves messages for the call to be returned. Half the time I'm sure they don't really want anything. It's another world.

"Here I am, working in the capital of the film industry and anyone who doesn't get a thrill when they walk through the gates of the film studio is harder than me. To be employed is thrilling, and to be able to live by the seaside at the same time is having your cake and eating it. I would be pretty silly if I didn't enjoy life.

"I've been stubbornly saying that I am going to be me. But I know I want to change. What do you think I am, perfect? There are many areas that I could well afford to change. One of them is that I have a whole side of me which is vague and misty and I have always kidded myself it is because there is an artist in there. But in fact, I am just a disorganised, messy woman who can jolly well get sharpened around the edges, please because I'm tired of her."

One problem, though, she said wistfully, is that she is not really ambitious enough. "It would help me if I could find something that I wanted, if I could twist my brain so that I wanted to be a star. But I don't. I say, 'Oh, well, if it happens that's fine, but if it doesn't I'm still very happy'. And I am, you see. I have to get a whole load of ambition into my brain."

Actor John McEnery, the husband who she separated from back in 1981 after six stormy years of marriage, disagrees. He said: "Her ambition could get the better of her. She's a go-getting, gutsy and completely committed woman who might not know when to back off if she can see a big opportunity in front of her."

"I think you have to see where that sort of remark comes from," said Stephanie. "John is a wonderful actor, and yet he is so determined not to get anywhere. He needs to be really encouraged to do a part. He is very self-destructive." They have two young children - Phoebe, 11, and nine-year-old Chloe - at a boarding school in England.

"I miss them enormously, and send them little gifts every week. I don't think they are too upset by my absence because no one says, 'How awful, your mummy has deserted you'. It is a very public disappearance that this single mum has made and they know why I've gone away - to bring back a pot of gold. So it is forgivable, do you see what I mean?

"It's also a bit show-off, I think my signature nearly gets them off detention if they can bribe a prefect with it. That's no bad thing. If my children can be proud of me, it's fine. But if it looks as though I'm to stay in America, they will come here, and they do come for holidays.

"I cannot do without them. Those children are my life, they really are. They are the only people who I have sworn undying love to. Everyone else - just friends."

Stephanie's first film, Nightcomers, in which she had torrid love scenes with Marlon Brando, established her as a major star when she was 22, but she turned down further opportunities. "I felt like I was being used, and I don't like being told what to do." When she met John, a Shakespearean actor who had just been nominated for an Oscar, there was an immediate meeting of minds as well as bodies. "We were a couple of young film-stars with the world at our feet and we said, 'Oh, no, showbusiness and movies are all too tacky for words, can't bear it'. We didn't care about money because we were always capable of earning it.

"I had been brought up in a cosy environment, with red velvet curtains, lots of dogs, cats, chickens, ponies and Walt Disney. I settled down to have six children because we knew what life was about - love. When that disappeared, it was a quite staggering business. I had to spread my wings wider and earn money. I would still be in fringe theatre somewhere if it hadn't been for the children and trying to earn their school fees.

"I gave up a lot for my idea of middle-class marriage. Now I think it's dull and boring, and I'm not too keen on it. Once you have one motor accident, you don't really want to go in for another."

But there are tales of love and romance, and she has been photographed in the Hollywood fleshpots with a number of alleged suitors. "My mother was terribly upset when she read that I'd said awful things about Emma Samms (who plays Fallon) because we were supposed to be rowing over John James (Jeff Colby). I don't know what Marsha, John's girlfriend, must have thought about it, but it was rubbish. John is an enchanting man, but I don't see him after work."

She was also reported to have had a row with Joan Collins, but now, she claims, "That was all made up by a journalist. At first, the producers of The Colbys were worried about our parts being similar, but we are so unalike and I have a whole bag of tricks which are completely different to hers. Anyway, I've never wanted to be a Joan clone.

"The more I see her, though, the more I admire her - the single-mindedness, the complete determination, the grit. You need enormous stamina for this game. It's like the army. I mean, do you really suppose they couldn't find women more beautiful than Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in the old days? Of course they could have done. But could they have found stronger women? No, that's the point." Two years ago, Stephanie says, she died. "I was in hospital - I'm not telling you why - and all at once I knew I was going. I was being led by someone whose face was human, but my attention was focused towards the brightest light I have ever known. I don't believe I could have had enough power in this life to create that amount of spirit. I realised then that we don't really die. We go on, and I will be counted for every action I make. My next life will be on the strength of what I do now. Yes, I am a deeply religious person.

"I decided I needed a brand new start. I sold my big house in Abbey Road, London. People came to stay endlessly, and they always brought wine - I don't drink - never Vim or lavatory paper. I was hostess and menial for far too many people. So I thought, 'Right, I'm getting rid of this mausoleum' which I had bought in the days when I wanted lots of children.

"I streamlined my life almost as if I was preparing for something like this. I wanted to find out how far I could go with the acting. I am stretching myself more with The Colbys than I would at the National Theatre because of the amount of technique involved, I'm experiencing the equivalent of a sudden vast turnover in films."

Steff is 38 next week, but her sensual, determined look makes her much sexier than girls half her age. "Old age doesn't terrify me because there are still plenty of good parts. I suppose it would worry me if I was a baby star who had come California when I was younger. I'd more than likely have had plastic surgery by now. That's the mentality here. But I have the wonderful knowledge that I have been at the National Theatre of Great Britain, starred in the West End of London and I am, such as it is, the genuine thing - an actress. That has nothing to do with stardom, it just means I can do the job." So what's next for Steff?

"I make no predictions about my future. The only things that really matter are health, happiness, a few funds and my kids. Expectations are what ruin marriages, friendships and everything. This is how it is; The sun is shining, I am working, and I will be seeing my children soon. I am very thrilled that I have been given the opportunity to prove myself truly independent.

"I used to be annoyed when my mammary glands were always commented on. Now I'm delighted if I can make anything out of my ageing body. How wonderful. I don't give a damn. I don't have to prove I can act, and if an actress can manage to be wrapped up in a commercial parcel - well lucky them."

Lucky Steff.