Somewhere
along the line American TV executives have got a funny idea
about us Brits. When US casting directors are looking for a
cold-eyed killer, the cry goes up: "Bring me a Brit".
And when they want an absolute bitch, likewise...
So
when the Dynasty stable tried to clone its success with
The Colbys, they naturally needed a Brit-bitch to match
Joan Collins.
They
lighted on Stephanie Beacham, a copper-haired,
classically-trained actress who had already shown her claws in
the title role of ITV's fashion soap Connie.
The
Colbys bombed, but Beacham rose from the ashes, being
brought into Dynasty itself to provide a sparring
partner for Alexis, now that goody two-shoes Krystle was in a
coma and every other aspiring bitch in the pack had been chased
off.
The
gossip columnists, eager for an off-screen feud between the
stars, were very disappointed. "But Joan is not a fool;'
says Beacham. "She knows Alexis needs somebody to clash
with. We're two professionals. We're not going to ruin a good
thing."
Two
professionals, definitely; two very different attitudes. While
Joan Collins - the Rank starlet who reinvented herself - is
Hollywood to the tips of her scarlet- lacquered fingertips, for
Beacham, Hollywood is just "the factory where I go to work".
She
doesn't deny it can be a beautiful factory. She spends her time
in a Malibu beach house. "It had never crossed my mind
before that you could actually live by the seaside and work in
the nearby film industry. I've always dreamt of a house by the
sea." When, after The Colbys folded, she found
herself in a freezing cold Czechoslovakia making a film, she
actually became homesick for the sun, salads and palm trees of
her adopted California.
Not
that California is really home - or ever will be. She's there,
gathering fortune and fame in a businesslike fashion, so that
she really can go home to England a little later and be with her
family.
"By
working here at this, I will soon be able to come back to
England and choose what I want to do. I know people think moving
to America is a sellout. If so, it's a jolly pleasant sellout.
And it has given me the freedom to do interesting stuff without
having to worry about paying the rent. I'm actually starting to
become bankable now."
Things
haven't always been like this. She had years as a single parent
bringing up her two daughters, by ex-husband actor John McEnery,
on the erratic income of an actress who, while respected in the
theatre, couldn't command huge fees. "I remember sitting at
my kitchen table with a script for a play that I wanted to do
and a bad film. The play would have meant about £60 a week.
And I had £2,000 in bills. There was no choice for me."
Hence
The Colbys, good money but a less than stimulating
dramatic exercise, except when in the company of her screen
husband, Charlton Heston. "He and I would take the most
preposterously silly things and work on them just for the hell
of it, as if we were doing Chekhov, Shakespeare or Ibsen. The
crew used to gather at early-morning rehearsal to see what the
play was."
Then
came the phone call, in Paris, which told Beacham that The
Colbys were over. "My sister had no idea who I was
talking to on the telephone but she looked at my face and said,
'You just lost 10 years in 10 minutes: 'That's because I'm not
Sable any more,' I replied. It was a release, like saying your
neurotic friend will not be coming to stay with you ever again."
She
returned to London, then came a film, The Wolves Of
Willoughby Chase, and the deprivations of Czechoslovakia,
which made her vulnerable when the offer came to revive her role
in Dynasty.
"I
hadn't eaten anything in the way of vegetables for three months,
apart from Chernobyl carrots. So I came straight back here to my
little home on the beach. All I could do was think, 'I'm not
hallucinating; that palm tree is real. That is sunshine.'"
And now, she says, "I seem to have tumbled back into Sable,
with her streaky hair and neurotic ways, remarkably easily. I
didn't think I would but it's like riding a bicycle."
She
has other American work lined up: a film with Shelley Long
called Troop Beverly Hills; a sitcom pilot about a nun,
and the offer of a Broadway play. And then she will be able to
return to her daughters, the absence from whom is the one cloud
on the sunny Californian horizon. Although Chloe, 12, and
Phoebe, 14, visit during the holidays, for the rest of the year
they are at school in England. "It has irked me so often
being without my children. But I know they are growing up with a
more solid set of values than they could possibly get having a
Hollywood mum in Hollywood."
So
it's five years till a full-time return to England, family,
theatre and... what else? Well, marriage maybe. "I know it
sounds dreary but I would very much like to walk into the sunset
of my life with a proper partner to share all of it with."
