Stephanie Beacham sounded slightly doubtful. "The other day I stared at myself in the mirror and thought how ghastly I looked. My 17-year-old daughter Phoebe said: 'You know, Mum, most women over 40 wouldn't be seen dead without make-up'. I suppose it was a compliment."

Happily, Stephanie can be seen with make-up on Wednesday in Jackie Collins' Lucky Chances and in Maeve Binchy's The Lilac Bus which starts on August 17, both are on ITV.

In The Lilac Bus, she plays Judy, a middle-aged woman desperate for a little sparkle in her life who flirts dangerously with Con O'Neil. who plays the driver of the aforementioned bus.

In her own love life, Stephanie has gone beyond flirting and is preoccupied with the possibility of finding a partner for life.

"The time is now right. I've decided that it's that, or nothing. You have to look into your whole life and see if you are ready for a permanent bonding with someone.

"Today there are no blueprints - we women are making it up as we go along.

"You might think you are enormously flexible, but you aren't, if you've been running things for a while.

"I want a friend to fall in love with. A partner. Ideally a partnership with someone who is either as successful as I am, or so secure in themselves that I don't have to make less of myself so as not to overshadow them - which I have sometimes done.

"A synergetic relationship is what I'd like. But you can't go looking for it. If you lead your life honestly, and leave yourself open to the opportunity, it will happen."

Stephanie is still a firm believer in celibacy, when necessary.

"I adore sharing, passion and sex, but not sex for the sake of it, sex as part of a whole. I do close down shop if there is nothing true going on. I have enough friends to manage without sex, although it's not my ideal situation. I tell my children, (she also has a 15-year-old daughter Chloe), please don't just have sex. It's shallow and meaningless. It's like a drug. Don't be a user, whether it's drugs or men."

"I have never had to depend on a man materially. It means the purity of my affections is kept intact. If I have a feeling for somebody there are no mixed motives. It's very nice."

She says she prays daily, was brought up as a Catholic, "which gives you a lot of guilt", but is now deeply interested in Buddhism, having been initiated into the Nichiren Daishonen Japanese Buddhism - an experience she shares with Tina Turner, Herbie Hancock and Boy George.

"I was introduced to it by a friend in L.A. There was a time in Hollywood when my life was very heady. Everything was too fast, too much, too frantic. It would have swept me off my feet if I hadn't stayed true to myself.

"I needed a structure. I do my Buddhist chanting, but I give my day to God every morning and I thank God at the end of it.

"I see it as my responsibility to be the best I can. I have also done regression therapy, which took me back to past lives.

"I was told that in Roman times I had allied myself to a false god and was utterly disillusioned just before my death. "This is my life for finding the truth of my beliefs."

With all this cerebral and religious activity it follows that Stephanie has no interest in "big beauty salons, fancy gyms or famous restaurants".

She says: "Frankly, the least fuss the better. I save the fuss for in front of the camera.

"My idea of heaven is brushing my teeth, picking up my cardigan and running out to the movies.

"My private life is private. There are just a few special friends with whom I can socialise, dressed in jeans, T-shirt and my Yugoslavian waitress shoes," Stephanie waves her feet in the air to demonstrate.

"You are allowed to have a private self, you know. That's what I tell my girls, I've got to be me."

With or without make-up...