Indian brave, courtesan, slave and the strongest snorer in the world
LOTS OF LIFE: AUTOPIOGRAPHY BY STEPHANIE BEACHAM (Hay House £ 15.99)
Spiritual side: Actress Stephanie Beach
It takes some time to get into this book, because first you have to navigate the prologue and not one or two prefaces, the first of the author’s 11-year-old grandson, who reveals that at 4 o’clock in the morning without makeup Stephanie Beam has green skin , witch’s hair and creates nightmares for him. But the wait is worth it, because, uniquely for a resume, you get not just a lonely life, but many of them.
Stephanie is one of those people (usually old actresses living in California) who lived before. Visiting Versailles takes her back as a courtesan there during the ancient regime; traveling around Egypt, she remembers being an Israeli slave. In the Wild West, she was an old Indian woman with sore legs. When she took mescaline once, she looked in the mirror and saw her previous incarnation as a South American Indian.
It has always had a spiritual side. At her school in the North London convent, little Stephanie, a non-Catholic, spent so many hours looking at a statue of the Virgin Mary that teachers contacted her parents and suggested she was ripe for conversion.
She also had her fair share of what might be called paranormal experiences. Once after the operation, she “died” and turned out to be floating over her bed, and was then led to a bright light by four Franciscan monks. She was brought back to life only to be minutes away from a permanent colostomy bag. Fortunately, a friend advised her to visualize a wounded kitten in her stomach that did the job; Stephanie missed the wind and the bag wasn’t needed. fu!
Another time, trying a “personal healing, diagnostic and wellness system” extracted from aliens, she had a vision in which a French doctor was very similar to Hercule Poirot.
On the stage in the Master Class as Maria Callas (“What David Beckham was for football, Maria Callas was for the opera”), the dead diva jumped up next to her and began buzzing in her ear in Greek. Stephanie was so shocked she couldn’t speak for two days.
Unfortunately – or perhaps ghostly – Maria chose her left ear. Stephanie has always been deaf to her right, a flaw she bravely fought to become a prominent stage actress, as well as her television appearances on Tenko, the Colbys and as another position on Ken Barlow’s bed ladder in Corrie. She also appeared on the big screen against Marlon Brando in his worst film. Apparently Brando was enthusiastic about the mouthwash. At Celebrity Big Brother, her snoring was so spectacular that it was sold as a tune on eBay.
Stephanie is a postmodern writer who avoids the conventional, chronological account of her 64 years and leaves it to the reader to gather arbitrarily dotted – and dotted – facts. She went to RADA, married actor John McEnerie, had two daughters, was divorced and existed as a single mother of poached eggs and spinach.
This would be the perfect Christmas present for someone who likes books by cute and old actresses, but who already has the full works of Shirley McLain.
