Stephanie Beacham falls out of bed at 4 a.m. and commutes from her beach retreat to The Colbys Hollywood set - a 90-minute drive. Lilies from Charlton Heston (who plays Sable's hubby, Jason) await her arrival - a chivalrous gesture to mark the first day of their second year in television's most troubled marriage.

Stephanie pops the lilies in water and promptly clambers under the sheets for an extra-marital romp with Ricardo Montalban. Her contribution to the day's plot-boiling complete, she rushes off for a wardrobe fitting with Nolan Miller.

She turns up for lunch an hour late "absolutely ravenous" after what has already been a nine-hour day. She looks like a Californian beach girl, dressed simply in an unthrilling blue and white cotton sundress - pretty, but very un-Sable.

Nevertheless, she is not doing badly, having acquired a ritzy penthouse apartment (to supplement the rented beach house) just in time for a visit by daughters Chloe, 11, and Phoebe, nine, who spend most of the year at a boarding school in Somerset and whom she misses terribly.

Oddly, she's chosen to live in untrendy West Hollywood, where you can no more imagine Joan Collins than you could behind the wheel of Stephanie's dime-a-dozen, convertible car. Beacham doesn't give a hoot for star status. Beverly Hills may encompass "such wealth as one has never seen" but Beacham is not about to become as tough, shallow and materialistic as Hollywood Wives like Sable Colby.

"If anything, I think I've been almost too 'feet on the ground', she admits. "Almost boringly, determinedly so. I think I can afford more fun now, but at first I needed to make some contact with what I call real people who are nothing at all to do with the business - and that's hard in this town.

"But I'm beginning to find some friends at the beach who are mums, where the important things are how you get the inner tube out of a bicycle tyre. You know, proper things, proper mums. Oh, I've always had my proper friends," she sighs, with obvious yearning for what she has left 5,456 miles away in Hampstead.

In an effort to bring her children geographically closer this year, Stephanie researched southern California's boarding schools. They're not a patch on their British counterparts which, to Stephanie, present a logical educational solution for a single working mum.

So once again she has to reconcile herself to spending the bulk of the year separated from her children by a 10-hour flight. It's obviously of great comfort to know that doting grandparents are close at hand.

"If I stay with The Colbys another year," she says. "I don't think I can bear to be without them, so then I will have to make some sort of compromise." For a brief moment Stephanie Beacham looks rather less than on top of the world.

She obviously could afford to spoil them rotten, but says flatly that she has no intention of changing her policy.

"They are in a very nice, sweet, Church of England boarding school in the depths of the country. They then fly over to Los Angeles. Fab to spoil them in the holidays, but they still know it's holidays.

"My kids' faces light up and glow when somebody gives them anything. Everything is still exciting to them. The sad thing I've noticed here is how jaded children get," she says. "Their tiredness worries me. It's too blasé, too accepting.

"The swimming pool for my children is sheer heaven - they are like fish. I'm treating them, not spoiling them. I'm a very loving mother and optimistic for their futures, but I'm not a guilty parent... I don't have to buy them," she says firmly.

"I think I'm probably quite a strict mum. We're a triumvirate and we discuss things, but in the end I'll have the master vote if there's any dissension because I've got lines round my eyes and I've lived a bit longer."

When they visit she doesn't shield Phoebe and Chloe from the disciplines of her work schedule.

"At least they know I can't say, 'Don't quite feel like it today'. Then, hopefully, when they don't quite feel like it at school, they'll know you jolly well have to do it." Stephanie is acutely aware that her mother is not entirely happy with her daughter's choice to head for Hollywood in pursuit of financial gain.

"I think my parents are a little sad that I should have been hurt enough in my marriage to need to go for a lot of money as my security, which I've done.

"You will never take love out of my life, but marriage - no. I don't want to get married again. The whole reason for doing this is for the independence.

"I wouldn't like to be answerable to anybody. I've done the hard years with the kids, working all evening in the theatre, then up all night changing nappies, and the girls and I are closer because of it."

Phoebe and Chloe's father is the actor, John McEnery, from whom Stephanie has been separated for nine years. They married in 1973.

"A divorce is something probably long overdue," she admits, "but he is the father of my children. And I think he's thrilled that those girls are so rosy-cheeked. Also he's very happy, I'm sure, at how loving they are with him."

McEnery, according to recently published accounts, has been down on his luck of late. They have little contact and their marriage was obviously no bed of roses, but Stephanie is saddened to hear this.

"I think if I've become anything at all as an actress, it's had a lot to do with John," she says firmly. "He's a dear man, it's just his nerve endings are bare. I think it's probably very painful to be him. I used to call him a white spirit because he's very pure."

Her success as an actress is all the more gratifying since she was born completely deaf in her right ear and with only 70 per cent hearing in her left. She makes no bones about it: if it had been any worse her career would have been out of the question. As it is, she tries to favour her good ear whenever possible with the co-operation of understanding co-workers (Linda Evans, for instance, is most considerate).

Stephanie's disability was discovered when she was little, for which she's truly thankful.

"They took my adenoids out and I had a very deep voice," she says, growling for effect. "But it didn't do any good, and then they realised what was wrong. I get shoulder tension sometimes because I'm always angled to one side so I can hear what people are saying."

Because there's no outward indication, Stephanie believes there is less sympathy for the problems of the deaf and fewer allowances made. "It's very lonely, proper deafness. It is very tiring being deaf. It's very muddling... and it means that you are not nearly as social.

"They can do some wonderful things now - for me, no. But unless children are given the right help they fall behind at school and are labelled thick. And it's something that need not happen! I sat up in front with the goodies at school. I didn't choose to, I had to."

Despite her disability Stephanie will soon be set for life financially. "Well, let's be exact," she says, "if the series stays on the air, I'll be rich in three years' time. That's the truth.

"Oh what a game! What a wonderful reward! I remember one year I did four new stage plays and earned £1,000. I was on top whack in Connie; I couldn't have been paid more in England. We are strange, we don't make things for sale. I'm angry with England for that."

She admits that now she has relaxed into the American way of life she has no choice but to sing some of its praises. "I think we've got a very low self image at the moment in Britain - well, everybody except Mrs. Thatcher's got a very low self-image - and I think it's a great shame. We've got to understand that we're fine.

"I find myself being so ambivalent, so... self-effacing in the wrong way.

"But there are so many things I'm admiring now that I've stopped being frightened. At first I was alarmed, but at the same time I didn't want to just get into the English community. If I'd scuttled into the Brit camp I'd never have been here, and I'm really glad I didn't do that.

"As it is, I've got the beginnings of some great non-showbiz pals. And now I will return Jane Seymour's call. Now I will start seeing the Brits a bit."

She's footloose. and fancy-free and has been "dating", for want of a better expression. Not that Martyn Stanbridge, the London-based boyfriend to whom she spoke yesterday, is out of the picture. Is theirs still a romantic relationship, even at long distance?

"Well, we didn't exactly have a romantic conversation, we just had a nice friendly conversation. But yes, I would say it is really. It's one of those strange things, it was never really meant to be in the beginning.

"He helped me enormously when I was terribly, terribly ill. So we started our friendship with his visiting me in hospital. Then, when I came out of hospital, he came down to the seaside where my parents live to look after me.

"So our romance developed well after a very good friendship had already started. At the time I was so much weaker than he was, he was a true Sir Galahad. So we started our knowledge of each other with his strength and my weakness. And that's lovely, because it's still something that I can acknowledge. He's a really good bloke, a really nice person."

Martyn's reaction to all the good fortune that has befallen Stephanie is proof of that. He's all but lost her to lotus land, but he encouraged her all the way.

"He said, 'Go for it Steph!'. We always wish each other the best; we pray for each other. I admit I am a prayer parasite. I'll say, 'Look I've got a really sticky thing coming up tomorrow, I'll need you to think about me at about 10 o'clock please.' And I feel it when people do."

Oddly enough, the men in her Hollywood life seem not to come from Hollywood.

"I have the beginnings of some nice friends who are there whenever I need a 'date'," she explains. "There's somebody in Denver who flies in, someone else in New York who's prepared to fly in. There's no shortage! Providing there's something in an evening jacket next to me when I need it, that's all I care about.

"I've got some nice little friends - you know, baby boys, people who'll carry the shopping. And then I miss Martyn, and that's nice too." One senses Stephanie Beacham is beginning to find this entire experience rather delicious.

"Yes, you got it, you've hit it on the head!" she agrees unhesitatingly. "As far as men are concerned, I know I can have boyfriends. Maybe that takes all the desperation out of everything so that you think, now what do I really want to do? Go to the flicks with a few girlfriends? Stay in with a good novel? Or go out to dinner with a man? Even choice. Whereas I suppose if there were no males interested I would get a little concerned. "

She readily agrees that having two beautiful daughters removes a lot of the anxiety about pairing off.

"I'm sorry, but do you know I feel smug about that. I can remember watching Rock Follies when the children were very young and I was up to my neck in nappies, and I thought, 'Oh dear Stephanie, you're a dried-out seed pod, you'll never be a human being again.'

"I watched Julie Covington and Rula Lenska and all those people singing and dancing and I really thought my life was over. But I'm smug now, 'cos I done it! I done it!" she says, chuckling gleefully.

"I've seen friend after friend make the dumbest choices of male to partner them in a desperate 30 or 35-year-old panic. I missed all that because I happened to have the children before I was 30. I'm just dead lucky-dead lucky!

"At least those two children were conceived within a marriage - and I know that sounds odd but that's very important to me. The two children came within the good soil of our marriage. The realities of bringing up children are beyond a lot of men," she says resignedly.

Stephanie's father obviously was not this type. Her family background can be summed up this way:

"Cosy. My mother's favourite word and her criterion for everything. They are the most unsnobby people; they have the secret of love. They are of the best. Daddy is a gentleman," she says.

"I sometimes envied Michael Caine's working-class background; he really had something to get out of and away from. We are middle, middle, middle class - it was red velvet curtains and lots of puppies and ponies. We all went to ballet classes. Money was never mentioned, never discussed.

"My father has always said that he's working class. I say 'Daddy, how on earth can you say that?' He says, 'Well, I've been to work every single day. If that's not working class, I don't understand what is.'

" The family have the map pretty well covered. There's her elder sister in Connecticut, her younger sister in Hove, and her brother in Djakarta.

"They brought us up so amazingly, with the confidence that we could do anything we wanted. Not that they were going to do it for us; they just impressed on us that the world was a wonderful plate and that anything we wanted to do, we'd be able to. It's a talent that, isn't it?

"I hate to hear parents say, 'Don't you get those ideas. I don't know who you think you are.' That's one of the reasons why America is such a wonderful society, because there's no negativity."

She sounds like a true convert and, if she has been won over, the happy working environment of The Colbys must take some of the credit.

"When I go through the gates of Paramount Studios, that's Hollywood, and yes, there's a thrill, of course there is! Come on! I've got my own parking space inside Paramount Studios! But when you're actually on the set it's just business as usual.

"Sable is off and running, she's taking care of herself now. Last season I thought there was no point in letting people see how I really was and confusing them. But they cottoned on to Sable and now I needn't be worried by being not the slightest bit like her. I can just be me again."

As for the so-called battle of the bitches, she and Joan Collins are so busy they never see one another. She admits, however, that there's fierce rivalry between Dynasty and its spin-off and says the prognosis for The Colbys now looks more promising after a decidedly tepid start. But she simply takes it one day at a time.

"I'm not really that worried about it; there's the truth. I'm not landing myself with such a heavy mortgage that I'm going to be in 'shtuck' if the series goes down."

She has the comfort of knowing that she always has her career in Britain to fall back on and, of course, a healthy niche now carved in the States.

"My real hope is that I won't get so spoilt that I need a huge income," she says frankly. "You know what a credit city this is? Well, I could have had jewellery, cars, any of that stuff. But I've been really tested now and I've found that my tastes are so simple.

"There's heavy-duty money expense," she says proudly, waving a pretty but obviously cheap watch under my nose. "Yes, I do have 10 pairs of sunglasses - big deal. I do actually have sunglasses to match all my sweatshirts.

"If you can't have something, somehow your mind cuts off. But it's really interesting when you could, and you don't!"

And how many stars share her love of getting down to a spot of housework? In her new place she can roll up her sleeves and tackle two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a loft area.

As we rise to leave, the waiter informs Stephanie that her presence in the restaurant has caused a major stir.

"It's very sweet what he just said, but I hadn't noticed," she says honestly. "I don't ever notice. Deaf and blind, apparently."