Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 13, 1993 TAG: 9303130360
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BEACHAM ADDS SPICE TO `AFFAIRS'
"I've just put the wash in," said Stephanie Beacham, settling down at home in Los Angeles to talk about her role in TNT's love story, "Foreign Affairs," premiering Wednesday night.Funny, you don't think of the woman who played sultry Sable Scott Colby on "The Colbys" and "Dynasty" as doing her own laundry. It's a little easier to picture that from another of Beacham's characters, Sister Kate, the spunky nun who ran a big-city orphanage during the 1989-90 season on NBC.
Beacham, like fellow Englishwoman Joan Collins (as Sable's cousin, the equally venomous Alexis), made her name on American television playing a rich, bitchy socialite. But she's been a single mother for 15 years and doing the wash is part of life, both here and in England.
Unlike the series that brought her fame and sufficient fortune, Beacham's role as Rosemary Radley in "Foreign Affairs" allowed her to return to England last summer. England is where her heart is, because that is where her daughters are.
And what did she think about the movie?
"The experience was so pleasant," she said, not quite answering. "You get so fond of a production when it is so pleasant to work, and you lose a certain amount of objectivity."
In this case the objectivity concerned changes the script made from Alison Lurie's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which Beacham had read some time back. Since then, the story had been optioned by a British production company, she said, but never made. TNT's film focuses mainly on one couple, less on the other.
"I followed that story over several years," Beacham said, "and when I first read it, it was a proper four-hander. You really saw these Americans come over and have affairs. But this time Eric [Stoltz] and I were put on the side burner."
Lurie's story concerns three Americans on a trans-Atlantic flight to London. They are Vinnie Miner (Joanne Woodward), a professor of English on sabbatical; Chuck Mumpson (Brian Dennehy), a burly sewage engineer from Oklahoma planning to track his ancestral roots; and Fred Turner (Stoltz), Vinnie's colleague.
Vinnie and Chuck are altogether wrong for each other. He's an extrovert who wears a Stetson and, to her distaste, a plastic raincoat, and wants to chat. She's a sensible, orderly academician who plans to read on the flight.
Still, he finds himself attracted to her and although his interest is not returned, manages to show up everywhere she turns. They become each other's second chance for love.
Dennehy, who said he signed on for the picture because of Woodward, plays a role unlike most on his resume: a middle-aged man in love. "Hollywood is a strange place where, once you get past the age of 40, having a love affair is regarded as an exotic idea," Dennehy said.
As for young Fred Turner, he meets mercurial actress Rosemary Radley and immediately embarks on an affair with her. But Beacham believes that the film does not entirely do right by Radley, whose self-esteem is dependent on the man with whom she is involved.
When the love affair ends, she suffers. The movie devotes much less time to her emotional breakdown than does Lurie's book.
Despite the disparity between movie and book, Beacham said she enjoyed the filming and concluded that "Joanne Woodward is one of the nicest women ever."
Beacham, in England where her 18-year-old daughter Phoebe attends boarding school, was obliged to attend an important parent-teacher meeting on a day when she also was scheduled to be on the set.
"I didn't know how to say it," she said. "There was no way I could have gone. But I thought about Joanne, and I remembered, `Heavens, she has raised three children.' So I started to explain to her my predicament. And she just put down her sewing and stood up and headed straight to the production company."
As it turned out, Woodward's instant willingness to intercede for another actress-mother turned out to be unnecessary, Beacham said. "Someone came in just then and announced that they were going to do some other shooting that day, and so we wouldn't be needed."
Beacham, 46, chose her career despite being deaf in her right ear and with only 70 percent hearing in her left. Close observers may note that she often plays her scenes on the right side of another actor, allowing her to use her better ear.
In the United States she's known mainly for her three TV series plus some movies and mini-series such as "Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story," and "Tenko" and "Jane Eyre," both British productions.