There
are two things that would make Christmas for Stephanie Beacham. "They
are the same every year," she says. "World peace and
long legs."
While
Santa Claus tries to work that one out, Stephanie would settle
for box office success for her new Christmas family film The
Wolves of Willoughby Chase - and some skiing.
With
her daughters Phoebe, 14, and Chloe, 12, she is off to spend
Christmas in the jet-set resort of Aspen with the man who now
shares their lives, American cameraman Steve Silver.
"My
daughters love him," she enthuses. "He's a wonderful
skier and in fact he was the one who got Chloe up on skis. He's
quite a fellow."
One
of the many strong qualities about Stephanie is that she has
never been anything less than honest.
Just
when everyone expected her to revel in her transition to
Hollywood and international stardom in Dynasty, Stephanie
flew back to England for a week admitting she was lonely,
missing her daughters miserably, working horrendously hard on "old
cobblers", as she called it, and without a man in sight,
let alone in her bed. "In fact," she said sadly, "I'm
the nun of Malibu."
Today
the irony of that remark she made three years ago is not lost on
Stephanie. Now she owns a beautifully fully paid-for home in
Malibu, she is a big hit on American TV in a comedy series
called Sister Kate, and she has found happiness in the
powerful arms of Steve who is 10 years her junior.
But
although she is now divorced from actor John McEnery, so is free
to marry again, she is not about to become Mrs. Stephanie
Silver.
"Being
honest, the basic difficulty is that I am 42," she says
bluntly. "Steve is 32 and the truth is that I have had my
children but he has not had his.
"I'm
not certain that at my age I could start having children again.
True, he might not want them now - and may never want them, but
I would hate to wind up when I'm 50, with Steve at 40, finding
out that wasn't the case. I'd kick myself. My ultimate word on
marriage is why ruin a good thing?
"It's
not easy for a man to cope when I'm in a top TV series.
"It
came to a point where Steve couldn't take it anymore and we
split up for eight months. It was a terrible time. I used to
wake up every morning thinking I'd be all right. Then that knot
in my stomach would come up again.
"Steve
was horrid to me. He wasn't going to have anything to do with
me, he wasn't going to have his heart broken again. We got back
together because we both felt the same way - we were both very
ill being apart."
After
a hat-trick of TV successes comes Stephanie's big screen debut
in a fantasy film, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase as the
wicked governess Letitia Slighcarp is quite a contrast from the
glamour of Dynasty. The film is released on December 15.
At
times Stephanie is totally unrecognisable as sexy Sable, having
shaved her forehead to give her face a long, thin look and taken
up smoking to slim down to a 21-inch waist.
Back
in America, Stephanie has been riding high in the TV ratings
with her new comedy series Sister Kate in which she
plays an intellectual nun with no knowledge of children who is
suddenly put in charge of an orphanage.
She
says: "It's great fun and couldn't be more different from
Dynasty. I miss Joan Collins, because she is so
glamorous and makes everything fun. Also, I am a terrible softy
and in a funny way Joan is soft. Men are her Achilles heel which
endears her to me."
Another
firm friendship to emerge from The Colbys and Dynasty
is with actress Tracy Scoggins who played Stephanie's
daughter Monica.
"She
has the most wonderful, long legs," says Stephanie
enviously. "Although I played her mother on TV, she didn't
get those legs from me!"
