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People
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March 2nd, 1986
Stephanie Beacham sizzles
in Sable as consort to Charlton
Heston
With
her icy beauty, withering stare, and the British accent she wields like
a poison dart, Stephanie Beacham might be the one to show Joan Collins
the real meaning of she-deviltry. Dynasty co-creator Esther Shapiro
certainly thought so when she signed the auburn-haired, hazle-eyed
British actress to play Sable Scott Colby, Charlton Heston's wili wife
and mother of his three heirs, in The Colbys. Okay, Shapiro didn't
scream, "Get me Beacham!" in the first flush of casting. Faye
Dunaway, Angie Dickinson, Elizabeth Ashley and Diana Rigg all tunred
down the role before Beacham even heard about it. But since the debut of
The Colbys in November, Stephanie has proved to be the show's real fire.
When Heston's sister, played by Barbara Stanwyck, gets in her way, Sable
retaliates by trying to have the family matriarch declared incompentent
and looseing the girth on Stanwyck's horse hoping that the old girl
might take a fatal tumble. So far Beacham and Collins, who plays Sable's
cousin Alexis, haven't had a face-off yet. But Beacham allows having a
go at it might be "jolly good fun."
Beacham,
39 this month, opens the door of her trailer on The Colbys set festooned
in diamonds and emeralds (they turn out to be $400 worth in paste). She
flashes a no-nonsence look that delivers what it promises. "People
think I'm snotty because I ignore them," she says. "I just
don't hear them." Beacham is completely deaf in her right ear and
has only 70% hearing in her left. She compensates by playing as many
scenes as possible on the right-hand side of another actor. Early on in
the series, when Beacham was most nervous, co-star Linda Evans showed
understanding. Even when the scene was set up differently, "Linda
just quietly manipulated me around to her right side. She's a
doll."
Beacham
explains that her main reason for doing The Colbys is her pay, an
estimated $20,000 per episode. "Look," shey says framing her
face with her hands, "5 more years for this face, friend, maybe
3." Her appearance, she says, never interested her. "Then I
realized that if I wanted to do film work, I'd better do it now."
She
almost missed her shot at The Colbys. Exhausted from completing her role
as ruthless business woman on the 1985 hit British series Connie, she
was on vacation when asked to return to London to screen-test for the
part. She was ready to pass when a neighbor she's entrusted with the
care of fher town house phoned to confess that she'd locked the keys
inside. Beacham had to return or face a cemetery of dead plants and
fish. Tested on a Friday ("I said whatever rubbish I could remember
and camped it up"), Beacham was flying to L.A. a week later, and by
the next day she was sitting in wardrobe. "We loved her patrician
quality," says Shapiro. "Despite Sable's seamy side, you can
understand why a major tycoon would stay married to her."
Beacham's
training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art helped nurture that classy
demeanor. But she had to get through some "corking bad horror
films" before winning prestigious roles, such as in The
Nightcommers with Marlon Brando in 1971. Beacham is proud of the success
she's since achieved (The Homecomming), but they paid scanty sums.
Getting famous in America represents the ultlmate financial jackpot. She
reports that her parents - her father is a retired real estate
administrator and her mother, a housewife- are appalled that she's
"chasing the dollar and that everybody is thinking of me as a
bitch."
She's
doing it anyway, for two reasons: daughters Phoebe, 11, and Chloe, 8,
whom she had already placed in a boarding school 20 minutes from her
parents' home in rural Somerset. "They are my love affair,"
saya Beacham, who phones them once a week and sends a letter every
Tuesday. Though The Colbys has upped it's initially sluggish ratings,
there is no official garantee as yet for a second season. Until there
is, Beacham has no intention of uprooting her family. "It's funny-
I wouldn't have been interested in doing commercial work like this if it
wern't for them, and now the work is taking me away from them."
That
kind of domesticity helped end Beacham's marriage to the girls' father,
actor John(Mercutio in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet) McEnery, 42.
"He was a rotton person to marry but a lovely friend," she
says. Beacham left what she calls "her cozy
red-velvet-curtained" childhood (she has one brother and two
sisters) to live as a happy hippie doing theater beforing wedding
McEnery in 1973. But, she says, with two children, "one of us had
to get grown up, and it was Mum." Although seperated for 8 years,
they have not divorced and have no plans to so do. "He is the
father of my childern," she says. "We are irrevocably linked.
Not being divorced acknowledges what we have produced."
While
her heart remains in England with her daughters, she lived in 2 rented
homes, one in Hollywood, one in Malibu next to Tracy Scoggins(her TV
daughter Monica Colby). Beacham's idea of fun is housework. "It's
pathetic, isn't it?" says a laughing Stephanie.
Beacham
admits to bouts of mild depression, "You want to see me cry?"
she challenges. "Let's talk more about my children." Many
nights she finds herself standing in front of the fridge what a script
in one hand and foraging for something to nosh with the other. There are
magical moments, however. "One day I was sitting on the set,"
she says, "and I suddenly thought, 'My God, this is
Hollywood!'" Plans for tonight are less the glamorous. It's home
and into jeans, sneakers and old sweatshirt. If there is time after
running through her next day's lines, Hollywood's hottest new bitch
might dash off a letter to her children.
By
David Wallace |
