Stephanie Beacham is every inch the Californian free spirit,
but her roots are still firmly planted in Britain...

She is in a frisky mood, sitting on the terrace of a hotel overlooking the Pacific, sipping dietary correct Pellegrino water, watching the sun go down. She looks wonderful, as always, small, firm and trim as no 49-year-old mother of two has the right to be, more mellow and humorous than I recall from her days playing Sable in The Colbys [it is a truism, universally remarked upon, that actresses in preposterous but popular parts become pretentious and pompous in inverse proportion: to their thespian stature]. Now that her two daughters - Phoebe (20) and Chloe (18) from marriage to actor John McEnery which ended in divorce in 1980 - are grown up, she is re-assessing life. "I'm like the Queen Mary, turning slowly. I hope I don't hit the rocks."

She has been gardening all afternoon and the time flew so fast she missed a planned visit to see her friend Jane Seymour's infant twins. "Babies fall naturally into my arms. Ask me about my talent as an actress and I can't say, but give me a baby with colic and I'll calm it better than most. I'd like to have had lots of kids, but it would have been selfish and antisocial.

"The only thing I object to about being female - it is the best sex to be - is that, my goodness, you boys can 'play it again Sam' with more aplomb than us. Mind you, it doesn't mean you're useful human beings, even when you're doing it, if you see what I mean."

No, I don't, I tell her. "Well you should. A lot of your sex don't do it at all well, and have no responsibility. Men don't seem to be up to much - basic slime, really, but I have compassion for your situation. All the most efficient, clever and funny people I meet are women. We're the movers and shakers now, though we're still at the stage where we have to be twice as good to get as far. Men have had it too good for too long. It's not that I've had bad experiences - I have some wonderful men friends - it's that they treat their women so badly. The riotous unfaithfulness is sickening to behold. It's universal in your sex, you know. We women are always talking about it and don't understand. I heard a wonderful line in a thirties film the other day something like, 'They are given the chance by unenlightened women.'"

Of course. Any man knows women are to blame. She lights a cigarette, searches for an ashtray (I'm damned if I'm going to pass, her one; no New Man, me), and continues: "It starts in childhood. Boys are aggressive wimps. Girls are nurturing, bright and sociable. I'm beginning to wonder if we need men. It's nothing to do with sex. Sex is always terribly important, but it needn't be more than a percentage of time, need it? I'm not interested in being answerable and I enjoy the absolute freedom of not having to say, 'I'm sorry'. You need men as friends on a broad spectrum and I have different partnerships for different occasions - swimming, sailing. A hunk for sex, a caring man for shopping? That's pretty much what I'm saying. Maybe your lover also likes shopping. Maybe he doesn't. Perhaps you only play tennis with him."

Come off it, I tease. All you really want is a cosy relationship. "You mean claustrophobic hell?" she laughs - her diatribe is accompanied by much jollity - and then remains silent for a long while. "The pause is because I'm trying to remember any happy couple, apart from my parents. I'm not disillusioned. I'm illuminated. Not a bitter taste in the mouth. More a bright light in the brain. You suddenly think, 'Hey, kids, life is good, life is free, life is choices.' Men and women are utterly different - vive la difference and all that -but we have to aim at good human being-ship, and you boys are lagging because you haven't appreciated that you've got to scratch you heads and think it all over again. I suppose I have to be in favour of New Man and, yes, it's wonderful that daddy does things, but some New Men wear their babies like trophies. You'll do better if you look after your wife, and she cares for the baby. The ideal is the way you see it in pictures of Mary holding Jesus, with Joseph protecting them both. The only reason women set up this fantasy that we need men is because sometimes we do - and childbirth is one occasion."

For ten years, since starring as Sable Colby in Dynasty and The Colbys [her Mercedes number plate, SAB, is a reminder of those heady, £20,000-a-week days], she has lived in California, "Mummy was worried when I came here. She thought I'd replaced love with money. I hadn't, but when you're paying boarding school fees for two girls, money does become awfully important. I enjoyed The Colbys but cried on the aeroplane returning from England for the second series and realised I needed to get myself a flat, a dog, a doll's house and a plant to water. Once I had those simple requirements, it was home and I was all right. There's something romantic about the fact that a little girl from Barnet gets to meet all sorts of people."

She is keeping an apartment in LA, but selling her house by the ocean. "I bought at the top of the market in 1989, and will be lucky to walk away with the moving costs. At first I didn't want Hollywood to go to my head, then I said, 'Stephanie, if you don't let this experience change you it's a waste.' Buying the house was tragic egotism, a strange delusion of grandeur but, hell's bells, it was a wonderful death blow to the guilt I felt for living, let alone being successful. There's a lot of convent girl still in me."

One of four children, brought up in north London, she was a bit wild. "I used to run away from school, change my frock on the train and visit a boyfriend in Oxford. I was quite dreadful. Mummy had to remove me from school on one occasion because I dyed my hair green. Now I am definitely receiving what I deserve from my own daughters. Tame they are not, but they are wonderful. On a daily basis I thank God for them. I wish they still wanted me to buy their socks and knickers, but they regard me as the pet dog; pat it and keep it happy."

Her first ambition was to teach deaf children to dance [she is partially deaf herself], so she studied mime in Paris, and worked as an au pair. "That didn't last long before the Spanish maid hit me over the head with a boot. She hated me because I was simpering with the parents but totally irresponsible with their son. I'd leave him watching a Punch and Judy show while I went for coffee with friends. They gave me lots of Chanel No 5 and packed me back to England where I visited a boyfriend, who was a founder member of the Liverpool Everyman. I thought, 'This is me,' auditioned with some O-level Shakespeare and got in. When I told my parents I was going to Rada, Daddy asked what I planned to do for a living, but Mummy thought it was all right because they taught deportment and turned you into a nice young girl."

The nice young girl has had to be a strong single mother. "I've felt the icy winds around my chest," she says. "I'm tough as old boots, but I'm not the slightest bit hard - quite a soft touch really. Americans call it 'emotionally available'. I cry easily and hope I'm a conscious human being." She has investigated regressing ("When you want help you ask the child in you what to do. Most people's personalities are set by the age of six") but in times of stress she travels to Las Vegas for a day with friends. "I gamble no more than a good dress would cost, and behave disgracefully. It's cheap therapy." Occasionally she envies people like Dorothea, her socialite part in No Bananas - "Women who have a husband to look after them and can buy as many clothes as they like. I get it out of my system by playing them. She's a completely dependent human being, selfish, diverting and I love her to pieces, but feel sorry for her as a specimen of womankind.

"I haven't dared look at the series yet. If I watch anything too soon, I think I'm completely over the top, or very close to it, because that's where I prefer to be. The only problem with the part was that I'm hopeless at that driving business and Dorothea loves driving. They found me a 1939 car with a preselector gear which you press and then use the clutchy-what's it. I'm perfectly accurate at steering, but have utterly no interest in the boys' toys aspects of cars, like changing gears."

After the filming she toured England in Strindberg's The Father. "To go to places like Bath and Richmond, in a play with long frocks with silly words that packed them in, written by someone who died ages ago, in... for heaven's sake that's a privilege. And to be in a TV series at the same time. Excuse me! High five! I'm amazingly grateful. I haven't been enormously ambitious, so haven't suffered enormous rejection. I've done tons of stuff, and enjoy everything. In retirement I want to paint - my drawing is very simple line stuff - and I'd like to travel more. I'm ready for a bit of South America and Africa. I made a foray in New Zealand and Australia last year, capitalising on being known, parlaying my way around by giving a couple of lunch talks."

In personal terms, though, it has been a difficult year. Both parents, in their 80s, are ailing and when she was filming No Bananas in England her King Charles spaniel, Emily, left at home in California, slipped on a shiny floor, broke her back and died. "Awful, awful. Such a major tragedy. She wouldn't have died if she'd been with me. I hate the dog immigration laws. It can't be fear of rabies - you have injections. It must be dog breeders not wanting to allow imports. We rush our racehorses in and out, and they get thousands of diseases. It's one reason I might live in France, although the pound is so atrocious at the moment against the franc. Do I ever get depressed? Do you call it depressed when your dog dies and you weep for eight hours? I call that normal. But neither pity me, nor envy me."

The sun sets spectacularly over the Pacific, and she says, "Today I was rollerblading. Tomorrow I'm sailing. I've planted my basil, my coriander and my mint - the only three herbs I need on a daily basis- as well as pansies, wonderful jasmine and tons of gorgeous things. Sorry, but I don't understand why one is not supposed to like LA. Yes, sometimes it's superficial. Sometimes I am. But LA is also capable of being really profound - and yes, I am, too. Only an idiot wouldn't like it here. I see no advantage in more than a week of winter. This is my home, but not totally because my parents, kids and a lot of friends are in England. Why do you have to choose? Can I not be a world citizen? I am utterly English, but I am not anti-American."

Time for indulgence. She orders a caffe latte, "with a ton of chocolate on top. But no cinnamon, please." A girl has to know when to stop.