Wedding for ‘Last Temptation’ star

Press, 9 November 1988, Page 24

Wedding for ‘Last Temptation’ star

DUO writer JOHN SMALLWOOD reports on the convent girl who became, first, a top model, then a household name in America through the Max Headroom show — and who is now going to wed “TV’s sexiest man,” Corbin Bensen of “L.A. Law.”

Amanda Pays, the girl with the big blue “Come Hither” eyes, who looks prim enough to make Jane Austen seem like a floozy, trotted along the religious road to a star part in the controversial film “The Last Temptation of Christ” — the movie that’s shocking saints and sinners around the globe.

She started out at her convent school near London, where (in the absence of boys) the nuns were sure to cast her as a friar or other male with religious tendencies in every play they put on. She appeared with James Mason and Ava Gardner in “A.D.,” a 12-hour, religious epic for American television. She plays a nun in the big-screen movie “Saigon,” a thriller set in Vietnam during the war, all of which leads naturally to “The Last Temptation.” In between times she made herself a household name on the “Max Headroom” TV show as Theora Jones, the strong-willed controller who guides Max and his human alter ego through the surreal world. Amanda, 29, was born in Clapham, south London, and brought up in the convent in Berkshire, the stockbroker area ■north-west of London. In spring 1986 she posed nude for “Vogue” magazine, and the American magazine called her “a new image for the eighties.” Observed Amanda at the time: “There isn’t enough glamour around these days. What this country needs is another Catherine Deneuve — so here I am!” Of modelling, Amanda said: “My break came easily. I wouldn’t have slogged around day after day trying to get a job. I find that demoralising, especially if it’s not something you really wanted to do to begin with.” And that’s pretty much the attitude she had at the “Vogue” session. She did not suffer nudity gladly. She covered her breasts with her arms and declined to smile. “My feeling was — ‘Let’s get this

over with, please’,” she said.

When she was 22, Amanda threw in the modelling towel and spent 18 months at the London Academy of Live and Recording Arts. Her screen debut came playing opposite George Segal in “Cold Room,” a psychological thriller made for American cable TV. She was chosen from 100 other actresses to play the mysterious teen-aged girl caught up in World War Two nightmares in Berlin. Amanda was on the way to success. “I found there were more opportunities for people like me in America,” she said. “In England there’s definitely an unnecessary stigma about models trying to get into acting. There’s a feeling that if you’re good looking or beautiful you can’t act. And there’s no glamour. We don’t really allow any kind of beauty to develop. Which is a shame — there’s nothing wrong with it. Anyway, I eventually sold my house in England, and I’m happy living and working in America.” Amanda has been described as aloof, but denies that, although she admits to being “a girl who knows what she wants.” That’s certainly the case when it comes to her views on men.

Said she: “What I look for in a man is chemistry.

A man must have a sense of humour. I love to laugh. I don’t take life too seriously. I like a satirical element to a relationship. I like intensity, although not necessarily intellectual.”

Talking about the differences between English and American men, she said: “Here in the States men expect the women to be the aggressors. They say, ‘You call me later,’ or they tell you they were going to call you but it had slipped their mind. “Sometimes I like to be pampered. At other times I know I’m capable of taking on most things in life. I’m not a feminist, but I do like to feel equal to a man. So I’ll paint the flat, bang in nails, sand the floor.

“But every now and again I like to be spoiled — to have doors opened for me. But men don’t seem to do that any more. It is as though there is no etiquette. No tradition. It is so sad.” Right now these are joyous times for Amanda, even though they come after she has parted from her TV and film producer husband Peter Kohn. There’s a new man in her life — Corbin Bernsen of TV’s “L.A. Law,” voted the sexiest man on the small screen. Corbin, 33, recently freed himself from three years of marital ties with British actress Brenda Cooper, and slipped a £lO,OOO diamond ring on Amanda’s finger. The couple met at a Hollywood party towards the end of last year and soon moved in together. Said Corbin: “I wanted so much to find a woman I could love and who could love me. I need so much to have a family. It scares me sometimes. I go for the person rather than what she looks like. “I love British girls because they are raw and passionate — nothing like the prim and proper image they have in America.”. Now wedding bells are due to chime before the year’s end — and Amanda and Corbin expect their first child early in 1989.