Delayed Christmas gift for Beacham

Press, 12 January 1987, Page 15

Delayed Christmas gift for Beacham

By TOM BARRETT

Sexy soap-superbitch Stephanie Beacham got just what she wanted for Christmas — two weeks in the arms of the lover she had not seen for five months.

But her present arrived six days late. The hunky British actor Marty Stanbridge flew from London to Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve after a year in which they fought to keep their love alive against all the odds.

The soft-spoken, cleancut former public schoolboy, who is 12 years younger than Stephanie, says: “Our affair is really so silly. We are 6000 miles apart most of the time, but it’s still going on. “If you look at it on paper it just doesn’t work out But the longer we go on together, the less I am surprised that we have survived. We need each other. It’s as simple as that”

No-one gave the affair a chance once Beacham

was signed up for a star role as sultry Sable in “The Colbys.” Beacham, aged 39, flew off to fame and big money and a new home in the superstar beach-side colony of Malibu. Stanbridge, aged 27, remained in his modest two-bedroom flat in South London. While Beacham has been picking up a cool $50,000 an episode in “The Colbys,” Stanbridge has been earning meagre wages in two 8.8. C. plays. Stanbridge says they have kept their affair burning by living off happy memories, love letters, and regular transAtlantic phone calls. But he admits: “I just don’t know how much longer

we can last By nature I’m a jealous person and of course Stephanie gets so much attention. But if I was jealous all the time I’d go insane.**

He believes the affair might have died but for the fact that he managed to spend three months with Beacham in Hollywood in the northern summer. It was three months of loving and laughing and looking at the sights of Hollywood and Los Angeles together. “It was so nice to go out as a couple,” he says. “For the first year we were together nobody knew about us. It was a full year before we went out publicly together. But

when I went out to California everybody knew about us. It was my first visit and Stephanie Introduced me to the cast of ‘The Colbys’ and showed me round.”

Stanbridge might have stayed longer with Beacham, but he flew back to London in August to audition for a star role In a 8.8. C. play, “Day After The Fair.”

During the long weeks apart Stanbridge has been existing on memories of how they met and fell in love.

He says: “We were working in theatre together and we had dressing rooms next door to each other. I wasn’t doing

very much in the play and Stephanie was one of the female leads. Fd been a fan of hers since I had seen her in ‘Marked Personal’ which was one of the earliest daytime soaps. I was in awe of her when we met* and I didn’t realise how glamorous she was. But the last thing I expected was that we would get together. “I had just broken up with a girl I had been with for four years and was feeling pretty miserable. I hadn’t been very pleasant to her and I was feeling very guilty. I wasn’t looking for anything at all. Stephanie had just broken up with someone, too, and we went off to the cinema. Then sud-

denly we were tumbling into an affair. Now I’m crazy about her. No woman has ever had the same effect on me.” Stanbridge says the age gap has never been a problem. Stephanie has two daughters by her marriage to the actor John McEnery. “She’s much more experienced that I am and she knows men inside out I just consider myself very iucky to be with a very special lady and the sort of woman who can Inspire a man,” Stanbridge says. Stanbridge jetted over to see Beacham when the 8.8. C. was screening “The Day After The Fair," a big drama in which he plays a young barrister who meets a simple maid at a fair and seduces her. He writes to her but the

mate H illiterate .~1 yH brek newcomer, Sammi Dates. This year Staabridge will star in another BJELC. . drama called “The Hedgehog Wedding.” He plays a newly-wed man whose wife and best friend are heroin addicts. Lynsey Baxter, another sexy blonde actress, plays his wife. Stanbridge says: "Having filmed these two dramas I feel as though I have got married twice this year. All the rehearsals were so tealistic it was just like the real thing. But it hasn’t given me an Itch to propose to Stephanie. “I see myself getting married at some point in

I Stephanie I Jut don’t Z. ..zL. T2Z mSkrsXiSX uS such an extraordinary rew«rt from Stephanie and I able to see any of the new series of ’The Colbys* on TV over here. SnTtiTleriS I h££ she enjoyed jr - 5 - DUO Copyright