"My mother Joan had a very difficult time of it. A very difficult time, indeed, when she brought me into this world. She was very ill. And if they hadn't carried out a Caesarean I wouldn't ever have seen the light of day.

When the time came for her to give birth, in Hertfordshire, my mother felt very ill. It was a difficult delivery, and the doctor had no choice but to do a Caesarean. So I arrived in this world in a rather violent fashion.

When I was born, things weren't like they are now, and my mother had chicken pox when she got pregnant with me. The doctors believe that that is why I am partially deaf.

"We have to do a series of tests on her, but from what we can tell now, she can't hear anything out of her right ear. But we're hoping the left one is not totally deaf," the doctor told my mother.

And it turned out to be true. I am completely deaf in one ear, but I can hear fairly well out of the other one. I have about seventy-five percent hearing in that ear, which is not bad.

I don't feel handicapped, or anything like that. At times, when I'm at a party or in social situations, I get a little nervous because I can't hear everything that's going on around me - although the truth is it's not always interesting! But if people are near me, speaking directly to me, I can understand everything they say without any difficulty at all. I try to let people know the situation when they don't know me, so that if they speak to me and I don't answer, they don't think I'm being rude.

My brother Robert is the one who actually gave me my name. At that time (he is eight years older than I) he had a girlfriend called Stephanie. It seems he liked the name and he told my mother, "Call her Stephanie." My mother liked it and I've been Steph ever since.

I adore my brother. When I was just a little squirt, I wanted to go everywhere with him. As soon as I learned how to walk, I was always asking him, "Robert, will you take me for a walk?" And he would answer, "Sure, if you can keep up with me." He'd start to walk very fast - I suppose to try and lose me - but I just took right off after him and, naturally, I became a fast walker. When my friends ask me why I walk so fast I always answer: "You should ask my brother Robert that."

Robert's bedroom was upstairs, and he had a great big stag's head hanging on the wall. He used to make me stroke the stag's nose and then say, "Now, run down the stairs and around the back of the house and you'll see the deer wagging it's tail." I was so totally naive and believed him. I would go running around to the back yard and stand under his bedroom window but, naturally, I never saw the tail wagging. So I would stubbornly go back up to his room and he would laugh and say, "You just weren't fast enough. Maybe you'll make it next time."

We went through that routine a million times, and I never did see that deer wag its tail!

Robert doesn't play with deer anymore, but he still has that great imagination he had when he was little. He is married to Judith and they have two sons, Justin and Nigel. They are presently living in Malaysia. He has a marvellous job - as a sort of economic adviser for underdeveloped countries. When he was just 42 years old he received the Order of the British Empire for introducing palm oil into New Guinea. He is a very clever and very very good man...

My earliest childhood memories have a lot to do with chickens. They were all over the place. We lived in a house with a garden in the suburbs of London. And we were surrounded by animals, especially chickens.

It was a complete ritual. Naturally, we had eggs for breakfast in the morning, and afterwards we would bash up the shells into little bits and throw them back out into the chicken feed.

It was a real show for us to see the little chickens hatch. My mother would take the newborn chicks and stick them in the linen cupboard, because it was very warm in there, and then I would steal them, one by one, and take them into bed with me. I'd hold them close and stroke them for hours.

But they weren't the only creatures we had: there were dogs, horses, butterflies... and a neighbour complained about the cock crowing at five every morning, our home seemed more like a farmhouse than anything...

It's curious, but we never talked about money at home. It was as if money didn't matter, but we certainly had it. We were a normal middle-class family, but we didn't lack for anything when we were little.

My father, Alec, worked in insurance for years and then, later, he went to work for the Duke of Westminster on the Grosvener Estate. Now, he is 81 and retired, and he just devotes his time to living a quiet life, enjoying himself. He takes part, along with my mother, in community life in Somerset where they live. and the two of them have discovered the secret to a peaceful, happy, quiet life. They have been married for 50 years, and they are just as close, just as in love now as they were the first day.

I've always enjoyed spending time with my father, except for one time, a few years ago, when he took up bee-keeping. Those bees did nothing but sting us - us, our visitors and all the neighbours, as well! Luckily for us, my father finally decided to give it up. He just lost interest in honey and now he likes pottering around in the garden. After the bee affair we all visited more often!

At times, when I think how hard it was for me to get ahead with my two daughters, I wonder how my parents managed with four children. We lacked for nothing. We took ballet lessons, rode horses, went to expensive schools... They gave us the best education you could imagine. I hope we've taken good advantage of it.

My father has always claimed to be from the working class. I used to say, "Dad, how can you possibly say that?" And he answered: "Well, I've worked every day of my life. If that's not working class, then I don't know what is."

The truth is, we were middle, middle, middle class, but my parents are absolutely unsnobbish people. They have the secrets of love, and are the best of people.

It was my sister Diana (or Di-di, as we called her) who wanted to be the actress. But now, I think she is the happiest of all of us. She is married and lives in Connecticut.

She works in a small shop, more for enjoyment than anything else. Her husband is a newspaper man and they have two children. But I don't think of her as just a sister, I think of her as a friend. She's one of those people you are lucky to know. She's capable of spending hours doing things like sending postcards saying: "Very good last week. You were great. You're really terrible." (referring to the last week's Dynasty show).

As far as her infatuation with acting, I don't know where it came from, but from the time we were little - she's four years older than me - she was always the "actress". I had my heart set on being a ballerina.

I went to ballet classes every day after school. I started out when I was four, and I was already determined to be a big ballet star. I wasn't doing it to become famous, I did it because I like it as an art form, as an expression of soul.

But, when I was 12, I went to try-out for the Royal Ballet School and, without even a once over, they told me: "You're no good." So, I didn't have any choice but to think about some other future for myself. "Fine," I said. "I'll give movement and ballet classes to deaf children."

Deaf people can hear music because they feel it through vibrations. My idea was to get deaf people dancing and give them a sense of rhythm. I wanted to open the doors of music to deaf people. I think there is a lack of grace that can come from deafness.

So I kept up with my classes and passed all my exams and prepared myself professionally as if I were going to be a ballerina, although I would never perform in public. I thought all that training would be valuable in the future to other children who had had less luck than I had...

I'm going to take a minute here to talk about my other sister. Janet, the youngest, is four years younger than me, and is a very intelligent person. She studied at Sussex University and has a degree in psychology. But this wasn't enough for her (she's a perfectionist). She later went on to study yoga, and, for a while, she was giving yoga classes.

One day she decided she should learn even more, and set out to study Freud and Jung in depth. My father, with his habitual sense of humour made this comment when he found out: "Why does she want to do something else when she's already making her living standing on her head."

She is very active in everything, and you could almost call her a therapist. She used all her knowledge to help other people to perfect their minds and bodies. She has given me very good advice. She is married and is the only one of us siblings who actually lives in England now...

Part of the great education my parents gave me was the choice of my school. It was Catholic with French nuns, called the Sacred Heart Convent. Besides learning mathematics and all that, I studied French from the time I was knee high, which was later very useful in my career, and in life in general.

Religion was what really impressed me, but I wasn't Catholic, I never really became Catholic. But churches, sacred places, places of worship, have always fascinated me. I was really in love with the Virgin Mary when I was little. At lunch time, when all the other girls went out to play, I would go to the chapel and spend hours staring at her statue. I would talk to her and tell her all my problems, but a lot of times I just sat there looking at her.

Of course, I used to say the rosary prayer and I also loved all those high church things, even though I was just six years old. I loved the whole ritual.

Ever since then I have felt secure in sacred places. They are comforting somehow. Every time I travel, I always seek out places of worship, of any religion, to find a bit of quiet. And when I leave I always feel a great sense of peace. Unfortunately, there aren't many places like this around here in Los Angeles...

My parents let me do the most extraordinary things when I was just a girl. I hitch-hiked all around Europe with a bunch of friends when I was only 13. Quite frankly, I wouldn't let my daughters do that now.

Nonetheless, they trusted us completely. Always. Their idea of child-rearing or education was that of permitting almost anything, of letting us do whatever or be whatever we wanted in life. Anything that we did was all right with them, because we were their children. They would say: "Whatever it is you have to do, do it!" They brought us up so amazingly, with the confidence that we could do anything we wanted.

So, in 1964 - I was 17 and had just finished school - I told them I wanted to go and study mime in Paris and they said that was fine with them. So off I went.

I found an au pair job, French, fortunately, was not a problem for me, nor was finding a house to work in. The family I worked for were people in the diplomatic corps, what you would call a "good house". But I was a total disaster as an au pair.

The head housekeeper, a Spanish woman, was absolutely in despair over me. She tried to get me to carry out my duties properly, but I had no intention of working. It was much more fun just to go out, instead of having to clean the house.

"If you don't do what I say, I'll wind up letting you go and you'll have to return home," she told me. But that still didn't inspire me with any interest in cleaning and household chores. I made her so nervous she once hit me over the head with a broom.

The only reason I stuck it out there was to be able to continue my mime classes and stay in Paris, which was a very expensive place for my purse at the time. But my mime classes were the only thing I was interested in.

My mime teacher, Etienne de Creux, at the school where I studied, was very strict. Very academic. Etienne was an incredible purist when it came to art. You couldn't even mention Marcel Marceau in his classes. He would scream: "Il est mort." According to our teacher, since Marcel used props on occasion - like candles or things - this meant he had sold out.

We studied art in the purest sense at that school. I remember how we would spend hours, days, weeks on end, just learning how to hold our hands in the proper position for mime, in the form of a shell.

We also did a lot of exercises in which we learned the four basic rules of mime: give, receive, attack and defend. saying it just like that may sound rather boring but it wasn't in the least.

The reason I was in Paris studying with Monsieur de Creux was because I had decided to try to teach body movement to deaf children. Mime was a great help for my future profession. Besides, at that time in Paris, so many things were happening in the realm of the arts, that any old excuse would do to have lived in that marvellous city.

But one day everything came to an end. The housekeeper lost her temper, and decided I was definitely the worst maid she had ever seen in her life, and she dismissed me. That was the end of my career as a maid, and in mime, as well...