Chatting by phone with SoapCity, the actress was eager to discuss her latest project, but she also didn't mind reminiscing about some other career zeniths (from Upstairs to Downstairs to Sunset Beach). Actually, the only thing that gave her pause was the subject of heights itself (the literal kind). Here's what she had to say:

Her French Connection connection:
"I don't really know how the offer to do You Belong to Me came about. They just called me up and said, 'Do you want to do it?' I said, 'Oh sure, very nice.' I did know Sonny Grosso, who is the executive producer, but I hadn't seen him for many, many years. I'd known him [back in 1971] because my ex-husband William Friedkin directed The French Connection, which of course was based on Sonny's own experiences as a cop. Sonny was the Gene Hackman character, Popeye Doyle. So Bill and Sonny knew each other, but I hadn't seen him for years and years. It was another lifetime."

Mary Higgins Clark -- a writer who understands women:
"I actually had not read You Belong to Me, but I had read a lot of Mary Higgins Clark's other books. She's a really good read. Her stories are always solid and kind of interesting. She always has a female protagonist, and from an actress's point of view, the female characters are very strong. Whenever you read a book that has a male writer, the women may be strong, but you will always get the love interest. They will always end up boffing somebody. In Mary's books, that doesn't come up. Her women are perfectly fine being on their own, thank you very much. Perfectly fine not having a guy in their life. Life is fine for them the way it is. She doesn't feel that it has to be commented on that they don't have a love life. It is the antithesis of daytime drama. For Mary Higgins Clark's women, it's work-work-work-work-and-no-play. For soap opera women, it's play-play- play-play, no work."

Parenting, postcards and reverse psychology:
"My older son, Jack, is 19. He's at Sonoma in college. Thank God, he's not interested in acting. He's studying business and psychology. I never pushed him to any of that, though. It was reverse psychology. If you want them to do something, tell them not to do it. My little one, George, isn't so little anymore. He's about to turn four. No, I didn't take him with me to Toronto [where You Belong to Me was shot]. It was cold, and not only that. When you're working, it's just not sensible, because what you end up doing is taking a nanny with you, or hiring somebody up there who is a nanny, who is then a stranger to your kid. Your kid is not only without you -- because you're working - - but with a stranger. So he stayed home, and I sent him a letter; and I got a brochure from the hotel with a picture of the high skyrise building where I was staying. I drew a little arrow saying, 'That's mummy's room.' I mean obviously it wasn't my room. I didn't know where my room was! I just knew I was on the 25th floor. He loved it so much that he slept with the letter under his pillow, and he showed everyone the picture and said, 'That's where my mommy is now.' He still has it now and he gets it out and says, 'Mummy, you sent me this letter. Would you read it?' (FYI: Jack's father is film director William Friedkin; George's father is Lesley-Anne's current husband, cinematographer Don FauntLeRoy.)

Okay, let's talk about that scene in You Belong to Me when the killer tries to smother Lesley-Anne's character by wrapping her head in a plastic bag:
"I think it was more harrowing for the crew than for me. It was unpleasant, but no, it wasn't harrowing for me. If I had been an actress with claustrophobia, it would have been, but I don't have claustrophobia. Actually, I have vertigo. I can't do that. I can't look over the edge of a cliff, thank you. I can't do it. I simply can't. If I read a script and if there is anything like that, I say no. Any kind of height wouldn't suit me. 10 feet? Sorry! I don't even like getting picked up, and I didn't realize for years why I didn't like that -- you know when guys pick you up? I don't mean pick up in a bar. I mean literally getting picked up off the ground. You put me on a bicycle on a straight road, no bumps, and within two minutes I will have fallen off that bicycle. My front wheel will find the only pothole and send me flying. I can't not be on the ground."

"Oh, my God, we thought that you were dying..."
"The stunt coordinators on You Belong to Me were petrified to have me in the bag. I could sense that they were being gentle about it. But I thought -- just do it, get it over with, thank you very much. It was a pretty long take -- it went right up until the point when you think that she's dying, suffocating to death. I was sort of doing these [gasping] little breaths -- and suddenly, the crew ripped the bag open, and stuff was taken out of my mouth, and my hands were undone and I was like, 'What's going on!' They were going, 'Oh my God, oh my God, we thought that you were dying!' I said, 'Guys, had I not been able to breathe, don't worry, I would have gotten myself out of this bag. Let's go again!' So it was more harrowing from the crew's point of view than mine."

And speaking of harrowing...
"Olivia Richards, the character I played on Sunset Beach, was great fun. Her middle name was Harrow. You know, doing soap operas, if you have a jolly good character like Olivia, they may have nothing in common with you, really, but for that period in your life, they become like your alter ego -- your fun alter ego. Off-screen, as you get older and establish a mature life with husband and children and schedules and the whole thing, there is a certain decorum that you have to maintain, a certain way that you have to behave. At a certain point, you're careful not to have another glass of wine and so forth. Well, it's great fun to be able to go to work and do a character where you can scream, shout, pretend to drink...The producers and writers of Sunset Beach were really very lovely to me. They wrote some super stuff for me."

A hard DAYS night -- Lady Sheraton at the ball:
"I was the highest-paid extra in history. Ian Buchanan and I were just glorified extras. And I have to say that being an extra is horrible. (She laughs.) The last time I was an extra, I was 12 years old -- 13 actually. I was already an actress doing proper parts, but my friends at school were going off to do extra roles in a movie called The Man Who Had Power over Women, with Rod Taylor. They said come along, so I went along and spent the day being an extra with a bunch of other screaming girls. It was awful. I hated it... But the coronation ball on Days, that was camp, wasn't it? I think they hated me on that show. I think I behaved badly. The reason I behaved so badly is because my father, who was due to leave to go back to England, suddenly had pains in his chest. He had an angiogram and didn't get off the table; he [stayed in surgery] to have a quadruple bypass. He's all right now, but you know the long hours doing that episode were horrible. I do mean, seriously, horrible. It would have been perfectly acceptable, tiring yes, but perfectly acceptable [working those long hours] -- it was what I was getting paid for -- but not this particular week with my father going through the operation. I mean, he was going through the operation when I was coming down the staircase. I had to rush every day, get to the hospital and [the NBC studio in] Burbank is 40 miles from the hospital. So it was difficult for me that week dealing with being an extra -- a highly paid extra. And you know, [the Days producers] are not thinking about poor Lesley and her father -- they of course are thinking about the main cast. So it was incredibly difficult, and I was probably very awful and I apologize for the whole thing."

The house at 165 Eaton Place:
"The thing that I enjoyed most was [playing Georgina on] Upstairs, Downstairs. I loved it. It was lovely in every aspect. It was a rather smart soap opera -- it was the ultimate soap opera basically. Soap operas in America lack that one element that Upstairs, Downstairs had, which was historical. The whole thing was about the characters' private lives [in early 20th century London] but there was always a current event driving it. [i.e., the sinking of the Titanic; King Edward VII coming to dinner.] And when the Bellamys first got electricity in the house. There were all these social events woven into the story. So it was totally and utterly the ultimate soap opera. It was not harrowing. It was just very, very pleasant. The [cast and crew] were lovely; we got on together. The second thing I really enjoyed doing was a TV movie about a stripper called The One and Only Phyllis Dixey. It was an English docu-drama that I did when I was 23. Just loved doing it. Very interesting part: I had to age from 15 to 53. I just adored it."