Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I play Liz Hurley’s naggy mum.. a character that’s no stranger to me as my daughters would confirm!
1971 film The Nightcomers. Today she and fiance Bernie Greenwood have been together 15 years. He is a dashing doctor she met via friends. “I’ve been lucky enough to find a lovely partner – and as mammals I think we tend to live best in pairs, don’t we?” she says.
She sees life at 75 as freeing her up to endless possibilities.
“I love motherhood, I love grandmotherhood. But now I’ve no responsibilities, in the way I used to, so I can give 100% to any project.” Tomorrow she is helping raise money for Centrepoint, the charity that helps support homeless young people, at London’s Lyric Theatre by taking
part in a homage to Judy Garland called Judy – No Place Like Home.
“It’s going to be such a hard winter for so many people and we have to help,” she says.
Next week she is going to a showing of a film she made called Age. At the start of next year she is appearing in action film Renegades, with Nick Moran, Lee Majors and Patsy Kensit.
There’s also an upcoming film called Grey Matter, where she plays a granny with Alzheimer’s.
“That was wonderful to do, and such a relief to be working from the inside rather than from the externals of what you look like.
“My father died of Alzheimer’s. That was incredibly painful to witness and experience and to deal with. But I loved playing this.
“I’ve got 75 years of living experience, 60 of acting and I’m really longing to just come out to play
with that,” she says. Now she is returning to Corrie after a 13-year hiatus, working with Bill Roache, who she describes as a “joy”.
Stephanie is also making a guest appearance in the second series of Whitstable Pearl on Acorn TV, playing an aged Hollywood star.
She says: “After a certain age you can only do a parody of beauty in an ironic way, or a retrospective way like with Whitstable Pearl,” she says.
“I feel so lucky. But I just feel my toy box is still full. In the future I’m very happy to lay the false eyelashes in their coffin as I continue to flourish as a human being.
“I know I’ve got my best work ahead of me,” she says, laughing.
Christmas in the Caribbean is on digital platforms (Sky, itunes, Amazon, Virgin, Google and Xbox) on Dec 5. Whitstable Pearl is on Acorn TV, also on the same day.
I wasn’t getting anything from my disreputable husband STEPHANIE BEACHAM
“We’d be better off at a Berni,” said the patronising bloke whose wife had just ruined dinner in the 1982 advert for the Berni Inn chain of steakhouses. She should have told him he’d be better off getting a new wife.
But sexist jokes and the Berni Inn eventually went out of fashion after introducing post-war Britain to steak and chips and Black Forest gateau long before going out for dinner was a regular thing.
The Berni brothers opened their first restaurant in Bristol, before expanding all over the UK. They then sold them in the 1970s to Grand Metropolitan, before Whitbread eventually turned the outlets into Beefeaters and Brewers Fayre restaurants.
L J White, who lives in Eastleigh, Hants, remembers going with his family to Berni
Inns in Winchester, Salisbury and Southampton in the 1960s and 70s.
He says: “We would go out for a very nice meal in the Berni Inns, which had all been down-at-heel pubs before being refurbished by the chain, bit like Wetherspoons do now.”
And Mr White also frequented the Chef & Brewer steak house in Bournemouth. He says: “I still have the menu from 1970 – you could have a prawn cocktail for 4/6 (22p), and a grilled rump steak with chips and peas plus a sweet for 15/- (75p).
“Mind you, my week’s wages were only £20 with overtime, before tax!”
■ Which lost shops or Christmas grottos do you miss? Email siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk