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Lifes A Beach
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LESLEY-ANNE DOWN ON THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF SUNSET BEACH...
As Sunset Beach's Olivia Richards, actress Lesley-Anne Down has been caught in an earthquake, had her baby kidnapped and got trapped in a lift with a man high on a sex-drug called Niagra. "I find it all utterly hysterical," the British-born actress giggles. "I have an absolute ball. Poor Olivia has been through all these terrible things, but still manages to put her false eyelashes in the morning." For all that however, she insists that she and her co-stars take their roles deadly seriously. "The finished show may be funny a lot of the time, but it just wouldn't work if we didn't perform it completely straight," she explains. "We have to believe in what we are doing, which can be very difficult with some of the things that turn up in our storylines. It takes every ounce of concentration and training. Lesley first found fame in the Seventies as Georgina Worsley in Upstairs, Downstairs. She moved to Hollywood soon after winning roles in movies auch as Hanover Square and The Pink Panther Strikes Again, and the big budget miniseries The Las Days Of Pompeii and North and South. Having also appeared in Dallas, she is familiar with bizarre workings of American soaps. But Sunset Beach is stranger than most. A quirk of the show has gone down well with British fans is the way characters spend several minutes thinking aloud to themselves. "I do more of these in voiceover than most." she laughs. "When I have a scene where Olivia is chatting to herself, I say to the director: 'Don't you think this would be better if we did it as a voice-over?' "The reason? Well if I do it that way I don't have to learn the lines - I just read them from the script!" The 44-year-old lives in Malibu withe her husband, film director Don Flauntleroy. With two children of her own, eight-month old George and 16-year-old Jack (from her previous marriage to director William Friedkin), as well as Don's daughter Season and regular visits from his other daughter Juliana, she certainly has a houseful to contend with. "I do eight hours a day on the Sunset Beach set, but it's at home that my work really starts," she smiles. "I swing into action as head cook and bottle washer. There's Jack to pick up from school, George to attend to, the shopping to do, the dog to walk, as well as trying to fit in some sort of exercise and remembering to take off my Olivia make-up. "There have been occasions up in the market wearing my slippers and full evening make-up. I get some quite interesting looks when that happens!"
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