Stephanie Beacham
Plays
Phyl Oswyn
What would you do if you found a £50 note lying on the pavement? Keep it, or hand it in?
Hand it in to who? If you know who dropped it obviously you would give it back to them. My great lesson in this one is that my father and I were on the Underground once when I was quite young, and we found a five pound note and he handed it in to the guard. And I said ‘Daddy, that guard’s just going to keep it’. And my father turned round to me and said ‘Well – that’s his problem.’
If you found your best friend’s / partner’s diary, would you read it?
No. It would cause nothing but trouble and upset. It would be a breach of trust, and you could read the wrong things into it. Put it this way - no-one, if they found my diary, should read it. Do as you would be done by.
Imagine you have to sit an exam and a couple of days beforehand, you come across a copy of the exam paper. Do you look at it?
Oh completely and utterly! I would take that as fate. I wouldn’t break into an office to look at it, but if I literally just came across it, I would say ‘This is what I’m meant to be doing. I was meant to find it.’
You’re having a dinner party and have spent hours cooking a fantastic meal. But just as you’re taking the main course out of the oven, you drop it on the floor. If you just pick it up and put it back in the dish, nobody will notice… do you serve it to your guests or do you come clean and order a takeaway?
Because I know that inevitably I would drop it on the floor, or burn it, or do something terrible to it, my dinner parties are always in restaurants. I entertain, but I entertain in the sense of talking and stuff like that, not cooking for people. It’s so long since I’ve given a dinner party. I’m no cook, so I just don’t do it.
You’re out shopping with a friend and they ask you what you think of a particular outfit. Your friend looks great in it but so would you – it’s exactly what you’ve been looking for. Do you dissuade them from buying it so you can sneak back later and get it for yourself?
I wouldn’t dissuade them… if it was in England, I’d simply buy it and wear it when I was in America, so there would be no risk of us wearing the outfits together.
When was the last time you got drunk?
I don’t. I don’t drink. I can’t finish a glass of wine. No interest in it at all – completely unlike my character in the series.
What were you like at school – teacher’s pet or constantly in detention?
Because of my deafness I had to sit up front. And that really wasn’t my natural order of things. I would have been with the bad girls at the back, but I couldn’t be. I remember the headmistress of one of my schools, in Scotland, coming up to me and saying ‘I don’t know what it is, but I don’t trust you…’ When I was leaving school she said ‘Always remember, Stephanie, laborum nia vincit…’ and I said ‘Love conquers all?’ and she said ‘Err, no, Stephanie. Work’.