Stephanie Beacham reveals she was raped as a young actress - and keeping silent ruined her life



In a candid interview the British actress Stephanie Beacham, who found fame in the American blockbuster Dynasty, discloses for the first time that she was the victim of rape in the early years of her career.
She speaks about the long-term trauma she suffered after the attack – and, controversially, about the issue of blame.

Stages and film sets were relatively safe spaces.
It was when they weren’t performing that Beacham’s generation of actresses had to look sharp.

“I knew that I had to be very fast on my toes. You had to avoid being touched up, although it wasn’t always possible. I can remember lots of examples where you would say, ‘Oh yeah, I wish you hadn’t done that.’ “That is why I sharpened my conversational ability – so men didn’t think they could take advantage of me in any way. I had a £5 note sewn into the lining of my coat and that was my getaway money. I avoided rape several times and a couple of times not.”

“Early,” she says.

So the Sixties?

“No, I will, for my own brain, be more specific and say once, and it was the very early Seventies. And that is fact.”
She will not name the perpetrator, but says he was “not a theatrical person”.

And did keeping silent about it cause long-term trauma?

“Yeah, absolutely. I didn’t know that that’s what was causing it at the time. It caused me to break off a long-term relationship that probably should have been my marriage, because I couldn’t admit to it, I felt it was my fault."

“No, it screwed up my life, definitely."

Her tone breezy, accepting. “It doesn’t matter. The person I’m talking about – I hardly know that it’s me. I’ve had many traumas since, I sometimes feel I’m this wonderful vase that if you drop it’ll bounce because there’s so much Araldite on it.