Veteran actress Stephanie Beacham says that taking to the cobbles of Coronation Street has been the high point of her 60-year career.
The 75-year-old became a household name when she played glam Sable Colby opposite Joan Collins in 1980s US soap, Dynasty. But she reckons that appearing in the ITV soap as Ken Barlow’s former love interest has been her best role to date.
Stephanie, who plays Martha Fraser in Corrie, says: “Taking on a part where it doesn’t matter what I look like is a very exciting thing.
"It didn't matter how I was lit or what angle I was shot from.
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“It makes me breathe a sigh of relief and think, ‘At last!’”
Stephanie told how playing Martha has given her a chance to use her formal training.
She says: “The important thing was playing the character as I was taught – all those years ago at RADA – from the inside out, rather than all the concentration being on the external.
“Beneath the external packaging, so to speak, I am a perfectly developed and still developing creature with so much life experience to bring to a role.”
The actress, who also starred as ‘Costa con’ Phyl Oswyn in ITV prison drama Bad Girls, is looking forward to taking on similar meaty roles.
She says: “I don’t think actors retire. We just carry on until we can’t do it any more. Acting, with all its challenges, keeps me young.”
Stephanie, who has daughters Chloe, 45, and Phoebe, 48, with her ex-husband, the late actor John McEnery, has been engaged to retired doctor and musician Bernie Greenwood since 2013. And there is a good reason why the couple have never wed.
“I can’t be bothered to put on a pair of high heels!” she laughs.
“I’m very happily unmarried – and intend to keep it that way.”
Despite a career spanning six decades, the actress has just one professional regret – snubbing comic Ricky Gervais.
The Office and Afterlife creator went backstage to meet Stephanie when she was in a play in Bath five years ago, but she turned him away.
“I was having to deal with a very difficult situation in my dressing room involving a very drunk ex-husband and I just couldn’t let Ricky in,” she says.
“I stood outside the closed doorway, my arms folded like some kind of 1940s housewife, and refused Ricky entry.
“I didn’t explain why and I’ve lived with that regret ever since.”
Stephanie, who is also appearing in the second series of Whitstable Pearl on Acorn TV this week, adds: “Maybe he’ll read this and find out why I was so off-hand. I would just adore to work with Ricky.”
