Hurt by the breakup of her marriage, the Colbys star says she's much the wiser now - and even uses that pain to enhance her acting...

"I shot Charlton Heston, you know," she says, pouring afternoon tea in a cloud of steam. Stephanie Beacham talks in a soft British accent, serving her guest coffee in a vintage Elvis Presley mug, baring a private self in contrast to her video presence as Sable Colby, reigning villainess on ABC's The Colbys.

Her hair is wet from the shower, she wears no color save her red toenail polish and her jewelry is a simple watch and a plain gold band on her right hand. Quite different from the darkly machinating Sable, who every week is seen as a walking sarcophagus encrusted with gold, diamonds, and petrochemical beauty aids. In the final episode last season, Sable wore an ash-of-rose silk turban that masked a fresh bullet wound, a result of an armed yachtboard struggle between magnate hubby Jason (Heston) and aspiring cuckolder Zach Powers (Ricardo Montalban).

"We were on the set," Beacham explains. "Sable aimed this elephant gun at Jason, intending to frighten him into loving her again." Beacham, who had never fired a real weapon, failed to turn the gun aside him. The muzzle blast peppered Heston's face and eyes with powder.

"I was horrified. I thought I'd blinded him. I said, 'My dear, you've shot an American legend. Moses himself. Bid au revoir to your young television career'." Her composure was further tattered when the normally reserved Heston groped into the building the next day wearing an adhesive eye patch. Nearing Beacham, he turned slowly to reveal a grin and a large eye painted on the bandage.

Beacham's Malibu beach house is comfortable and unremarkable but for the many family snapshots and her daughters' drawings papering her walls. There is a lived-in quality to the woman and her home - an emotional depth and spontaneity rare in many show-biz, designer-created lives. This stands in sharp relief to The Colbys, which on bad nights resembles a pack of miscreant jet-setters and their snotty children, condemned to spend a long weekend in an abandoned theme park (Richworld) , raiding the wardrobes and liquor cabinets out of desperate boredom.

Relaxed and tan from a British beach holiday with daughters Chloe (9) and Phoebe (12), she covers her bare shoulder against the Pacific afternoon breeze with a cotton shawl. At 39, Beacham resembles something of a matured European gamin. She talks candidly about the transition from girl to woman, an often painful process she feels many females never undertake - in her case, one begun after her separation from actor John McEnery eight years ago.

As she does, she hugs her legs to her chest, resting her chin on her knee, her drying hair sun-reddened at the fringes.

Physically, I began to mature from girl to woman between my 11th and 12th birthdays. I was an sbsolute tomboy and my greatest possession was my 11th year gift: a fully reversible Tonto and Lone Ranger outfit, so I could switch sides in a flash. I adored it. When the 12th birthday rolled around, I wanted nothing on earth as much as a pair of little Louis XIV heels, which I got.

"It was sudden. These... bosoms appeared. Being suddenly endowed was a great embarrassment to me. So bodily, I've been a woman for 20-odd years. Emotionally, I'd say about four or five."

"Look at this," she tsk-tsks, opening the West Country Times, a newspaper serving her parents' village of Dunster. The headline reads, "The Price of Being a Colby," and there are photos of her parents (her father, a retired insurance-company executive: mother, a homemaker), her two sisters and brother and Beacham at various ages.

"At first Mum and Dad frowned on my chasing the buck on American television. Now the family seems to enjoy it. My sister in Connecticut told me, 'You have brought me the fame I richly deserve. You may continue your career.'

"No," she says, responding to a suggestion that the demonic Sable could only be powered by a deep childhood trauma in the actress who plays her. "I had a perfect, red-velvet-curtain upbringing. My parents were and are marvelous. There probably is a wound - yes," she admits with disarming candor. "Perhaps my marriage, but that came much later.

"Now our Sable," she shifts. "She's a monster, isn't she? But very human. I thought they wanted an Alexis clone, like Dynasty, but Sable is not so much a relentless bitch. More a portrait of love gone wrong. She does not comprehend that you cannot manipulate people, possess your children's, your husband's lives.

"She is a consummate guilt-tripper, making others feel terrible when they can't accede to her warped desires, but she really is oblivious to the fuss. Like Imelda Marcos, who can't grasp the uproar over having three thousand pairs of shoes.

"She tried to commit Constance (Barbara Stanwyck) to a mental institution, shot an elephant gun at Jason, surprised him with a 25th anniversary party on the evening he was to move out, and allowed his rival-in-life, Zach Powers, to disrobe and caress her. These things drive people mad but Sable doesn't see it. She puts on a red hat and a pretty face and sallies forth each morn."

While Beacham has emerged as one of few bright spots in The Colbys, an indifferent spin-off from Dynasty that is earning decidedly indifferent ratings, her success was not immediate. Co-producers Aaron Spelling and Richard and Esther Shapiro tested more than twenty actresses. After the likes of Faye Dunaway, Angie Dickinson, Elizabeth Ashley and Diana Rigg didn't work out, they chose the Hertfordshire, England, native.

After attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Beacham worked in stage classics from Shakespeare to Pinter, and later in feature films with Marlon Brando ("The Nightcomers") and Ava Gardner ("Tam-Lin"). She comes to American TV fresh from acclaimed leads in two recent British series with strong female emphasis; Tenko and Connie.

The talk meanders back to her marriage to John McEnery (who co-starred as Mercutio in the film "Romeo and Juliet"). A self-described "happy hippie" in the late 60s ("I was quite outrageous. No shoes, here's your flower for the day"), she was married to the actor in 1973.

"It was a dreadful error. We took a seven-bedroom house in London and I put my career on hold. I saw no reason why there shouldn't be children in every room." Her voice quiets once more.

"There, perhaps, is the wound you sought. Shortly after Chloe's birth, he left. The entire mantle of running a huge house, caring for the babies and rekindling a career fell on my shoulders. It was horrible, a dreadful time. I hurt very badly and marked the pain... I draw on that pain when I work.

"How did I pull out of it? Good friends and time. But if you really want to know, my husband seemed to be attracted to nothing but 18-year-olds. I was puzzled - what was this special magnetism they possessed? Then a friend asked me to teach her acting class for a day - a whole roomful of 18-year-olds. I said yes. It was great! I found out what it was that they were about: raw potential energy. We loved each other.

"Yes, if you like, I fell in love with the enemy. And when one does, they cease to be the enemy. They no longer have that power."

"Shortly after, I think I began my own process of maturation, evolving toward being a whole woman. When I'm cynical, I say I evolved from prey to predator. I was instructed by other women and when I think on it, it is true of my craft as well. I can't say I've learned anything about acting from all the men with whom I've worked.

"I suppose my conclusion to marriage is rather sad." She measures her words. "I will never, ever rely on another man." This is one of my reasons for wanting a financially successful career. I admit to a great weakness for you men, but simply because my need is there, it doesn't mean I can rely on you. Or expect anything of you. I regard you as more my diversion or my plaything - not the mainstream of my financial or emotional nourishment.

Beacham's male visitor protests his discomfort. He confesses to feeling akin to a live moth being skewered with a pushpin. "That's what you've been doing to the girls for a long time, " she says, with a faint, teasing smile. "I do allow, however... that some of you are human beings.

"I would certainly marry again - when my babes have left home, to someone who was a friend. I would rub arthritic cream on his shoulders and expect him to do the same for me. We'd talk of whether or not it will be azaleas this year, or roses again. Where we were going for a walking holiday. In short, I will not entertain another relationship that is fed mainly by personal electricity. Mind you, being alone later in life is not at all attractive to me. I would like to walk arm-in-arm with someone into the sunset of old age.

This is rather un-Sable-like, isn't it?" she says dryly.

The someone she speaks of may well be 27-year-old actor Martyn Stambridge, with whom Beacham worked at the National Theatre in 1983. "We were friendly, and when I went to the hospital for an operation, he came to visit. I couldn't walk when I came home, and he came 'round to visit there, too. He cared for me - going so far as to carry me to the lavatory. We grew to be friends, and then, very gradually, lovers." She pauses very deliberately. "Martin and I think we have that chance... to be friends and lovers for life, and frankly, I don't want to spoil it by talking too quickly."

One thing is certain: if the parties producing The Colbys don't work on the show, Stephanie Beacham's second season - through no fault of her own - may be her last. When the editors of TV Guide branded it "The Worst Soap of 1985-86," they were not headhunting. The show was often lifeless last season.

The front-line acting was adequate for a soap but a weak storyline and plodding episodic scripts denied the veterans very much juice with which to work. Subplots for the "puppies" (junior cast) were so skeletal most viewers found it hard to remember, much less care about, them. The politic Heston was surprisingly candid in his criticism and Barbara Stanwyck, tired of posing in pearls and uttering lines like this: "I expected to find an invalid, not the Queen of Sheba. I must say, Sable, you take a bullet in your head very well," elected not to return to the continuing cast this season.

ABC-TV remains optimistic, even though The Colbys consistently comes in last in it's time slot. Four new characters were added this season, plus what co-producers Robert and Eileen Pollock describe as "a new face for Sable - that of international businesswoman" - and a revolutionary design for family life between Jason, Sable and her sister Francesca (Katharine Ross). None of this has improved the ratings.

But Beacham is rated highly by the cast and crew. One of the brighter young principals, Tracy Scoggins (Monica), lives two doors down from her and earns the tag of "my best American friend."

"We're an ocean apart in background," the leggy Texan explains, "but we're yin-yang friends. We hit it off the first day of filming. She was suddenly plopped down into the middle of all this - very homesick and missing her kids... I was struck by Stephanie's beauty: she's radiant and has a great body. Professionally, she has a wealth of knowledge. I'll be troubled by a scene and wander down the hall for help. I can read the lines twenty times and not see it but she glances once and says, 'Here. This is the key point.' It's like having a pal for a tutor."

Charlton Heston speaks more of the professional: "I first saw Stephanie in her screen test. We'd gone through scores of actresses but when we saw her we were immediately impressed. To start, she has the physical equipment to attract a man like Jason. She's alluring, sexually attractive and she is a bit of a patrician. Her Sable can be truly outrageous - every two or three episodes we have to humanize her, restore her emotional credibility with the audience and Stephanie can play both sides.

"We must not be a Dynasty copy," Heston continues. "If Joan Collins' character wore a tag, it would read 'Rich Bitch', but Stephanie's character is less heartless, more complex. And I think - though perhaps I shouldn't be saying this - Stephanie's a better actress. She might, however," he concludes, "work on Sable's gun-handling habits."

As the afternoon wanes to evening, Beacham shows her guest out. "I'm very pleased these days," she says. "The kids are doing well in boarding school in England - Chloe, who is an absolute shrimp, won the javelin throw on Sports Day - and I'm pumping iron here in California." She makes a muscle. "Overall fitness, so I can be an even stronger Sable."

"Now that I've proven I can play Sable properly, perhaps I'll be a bit less the reserved Brit - more outgoing. But I'm still able to go to the market scruffy and queue up without being noticed. That is, until I open my mouth. I can hear them thinking, 'It's that beast, Sable. And she seems so normal, eating human food and such.' I guess I can be proud of that, can I not?"

Article Courtesy of Ebony