Before
ordering a garlic-laden dish of angel hair pasta with pesto,
Stephanie Beacham considers her Dynasty shooting schedule,
and announces, "I haven't got a love scene today," and
decides to go for it. Lighting up a Rothmans (English cigarettes
are one of her vices), she surveys the sparkling Pacific Ocean
from the cliffside terrace of Geoffrey's, an alfresco restaurant
in Malibu. Then she recalls a little bit of acting etiquette she
learned while working on the 1971 film The Nightcomers: "I
remember Marlon Brando saying to me - because he used to go
through a thing of mouthwash a day - 'You can't get someone to
fancy you, but you can keep someone from hating you. If I ever
smell, you've got to tell me.' He was very considerate that way."
She laughs her slyly bemused laugh, and then confides, "He
was on a diet because he said his sex life was being impaired."
Pause. "So I think his sex life must, in fact, be finished by
now."
As
Sable Colby, the newest arch-villainess to cross quips with Joan
Collins' forbidding Alexis on Dynasty, Beacham, 42, is
quite capable of making even the most innocuous lines sound
wickedly venomous. Off-camera, however, her image differs. She
wears her maple-syrup-colored hair in a casual cascade in
contrast to Sable's severe, upswept do, and prefers padding
around her Malibu beach house in nothing but jeans and a T-shirt
without benefit of makeup.
Beacham
was first introduced to American TV audiences as Sable, the star
of The Colbys, on the ill-fated Dynasty spin-off
that played two bumpy years on ABC. Initially she was relieved
when the series was canceled in 1986. She was in Paris with one
of her sisters when she learned of the show's demise via phone.
"My younger sister had no idea who I was talking to on the
telephone," she recounts, "but she looked at my face
and said, 'You just lost 10 years in 10 minutes.' 'That's
because I'm not Sable anymore,' I said. It was like saying your
neurotic friend will not be coming to stay anymore."
Sable's
social striving seemingly behind her, Beacham happily returned
to the London stage to play opposite Jeremy Irons in the Royal
Shakespeare Company's The Rover. Next she moved on to
Czechoslovakia to film a gothic tale, The Wolves of
Willoughby Chase. And then came the second call, paging her
to resurrect Sable for a regular role on Dynasty.
"Going
back is never a good idea," Beacham admits. "But being
in Czechoslovakia, it was America I missed. I hadn't eaten
anything in the way of vegetables for three months, apart from
Chernobyl carrots. And so I came straight back here to my little
home on the beach. All I could do is think, 'I'm not
hallucinating; that palm tree is real. That is real
sunshine.'"
She
almost had to pinch herself once she reported back to work at
the Carrington mansion. "Suddenly to be going at it with
Alexis, I suddenly thought, 'This isn't real. I think I've
fallen asleep on the sofa while watching Dynasty, and
I'm having a dream that I'm in it,'" Beacham says,
laughing. "I seem to have tumbled back into Sable, with her
streaky hair and neurotic ways, remarkably easily. I didn't
think I would just blow into it again, but it's like riding a
bicycle."
The
tabloids were primed for a behind-the-scenes tussle between
Collins, the series reigning diva, and Beacham, the pretender to
her throne. But Beacham was determined to let them down. As she
tells it, "When I first came to L.A., Joan sent me flowers,
and then we met for coffee, I asked her where to get my legs
waxed."
Beacham
never had any doubts that she and Collins, even though their
onscreen personae share what she describes as "a deep bond
of mutual loathing," would square off like a couple of old
pros; "I think we both enjoy a good game of verbal tennis.
Joan is not a fool. She knows Alexis needs somebody to clash up
against."
But
she was surprised that shortly after they started work on the
set together, the producers called her not to congratulate her
for doing the scene well, but for getting on together. "But
we're two professional women," Beacham insists. "We're
not going to ruin a perfectly good thing."
Beacham
laments the fact that the slickly produced Dynasty, now
in its ninth season and faltering, does not present quite the
challenge that The Colbys offered her. "I miss
Charlton Heston," she says of her Colby costar. "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
rehearsals to see what the play was."
Heston,
who played Beacham's estranged husband on The Colbys, recalls,
"We used to have conferences on the dialogue, and Stephanie
was always generous in accepting any changes I made. She was
never late, never unprepared, always knew all her marks. That
sounds trivial, but it isn't."
"I
haven't felt the same concentrated feeling on the Dynasty
set," says Beacham. "Maybe everybody's been doing
it for rather too long." Initially renewed for just 13
episodes this year, the show was moved from its traditional
Wednesday-night slot to Thursdays at 9 p.m. There, it battles
NBC's Top Ten-rated Cheers. "We're in the Colby
suicide slot, and it's a rotten, rotten place to be,"
says Beacham.
Although
the series' future may be in doubt, Beacham is committed to
putting down the roots in America (she will appear with Shelley
Long in the spring release of Troop Beverly Hills). Her
two daughters from her earlier marriage to British actor John
McEnery, Chloe, 12, and Phoebe, 14, remain in school in England,
but join her for vacations. "They love it here," she
says. The trio has been a tightly knit support group ever since
Beacham separated from McEnery in 1978 after five years of
marriage. It was only last year that they formally divorced. "I
hadn't gotten divorced before, partly because I didn't want it
to be an emotional thing, and partly because I didn't want
anyone to think that I was needy," Beacham explains. "I
was a single-parent mum and not available. There was a time that
if I'd let myself think too hard, I was really needy. I had to
make a decision about whether to find a man to pay the school
fees or say, 'You can do it, girl,' I decided to go the
independent route. And there was a lot of satisfaction in it.
The kids are proud of me. They know what I've done for them."
The
British press, which has followed her every move since she shot
to stardom back home, dubbed her the Nun of Malibu. Not quite
true. Beacham admits that she has quietly forged a new
relationship, but refuses to divulge the details. "He's
very private," she maintains, "and that's why we seem
able to stick it out."
And
though she keeps up with fellow British transplants such as
Lesley-Anne Down and David Hemmings, she is friendly with
beachfront neighbors, saying, "I started feeling
comfortable with America only when I started meeting families,
people with family problems and not show-business problems. The
little girl who lives next door just had a baby, and I enjoy
spending my time around those nappies and bottles."
This from the woman who is Sable?
