Many Lives (17 page)

If you need some retail therapy, sew a £50 note into the hem of your jacket and think of it as money you've spent on your own protection. Invest in looking after yourself. If there's nothing you want more right now than a bar of chocolate – drink a pint of water to make sure that your stomach is full. Eat some greens and
some protein. You still really want that chocolate? Go and buy it. Eat one square and give the rest away. You've got what you needed.

Be conscious of what you're doing from moment to moment. This is the essence of practical consciousness.

With any addictive behaviour, there's always way more going on. When I realized that, I started thinking about getting some really practical therapy. I wasn't interested in going to see some therapist who was going to nod wisely, listen and say, ‘I'll see you the same time next week.' I might as well just talk to a friend on the telephone. I see no point in that. For me, Inner Bonding is about as good as it gets, and I fell into that by serendipity and being bitchy.

This is another of the big words. If it's your intention to learn, you will. If it's your intention to succeed, you'd better know what you're going to succeed in first. Simply having the intention to be famous or notorious is a very strange scam to pull on yourself.

We all know we can do whatever we want. I don't have to eat well today, but if not today, when? Will I wait until the pain arrives? It'll be more uncomfortable. Think ahead.

I try to live in the moment. I plan for the future but live in the present. Living in the present doesn't mean that I haven't set my sights, but there's no need to live in the tension of those sights. It's called ‘do without doing'. It's straight out of the universe's magic box, but it takes a lot of trust. If you've made a statement of intent you can rest easy; it's in process. Do without doing. If you have put the intention out into the world, you'll naturally start acting towards it. If you've really decided to do something,
a way will come. It's there, it's stated, and it's in the universe. But be careful what you intend to ask for, because you will get it.

If you do an unexpected and unnecessary act of kindness, the strange and wondrous thing is that the universe will always give you back a strange and unexpected act of kindness. It works like that. But it has to be done with the correct intention. Not with the expectation of getting it back.

If I fall into a funk, I give myself 16 things to do. Moving the teacups into the dishwasher, washing up the saucepan, cleaning down the tiles, making the bed; all the way to 16. I could tell when a particular friend of mine was depressed because he'd always be immaculately presented. He'd say, ‘I can't stop being depressed but at least I can do the ironing while I'm feeling down.' He used to make himself feel better by ironing his shirts.

Give yourself 16 things to do and then see how you feel when you walk out the door.

We use so many negative words. It's just a habit we get into. The habit of positivity can replace the habit of negativity. There's something cultural about it. We British love to tell stories that are both self-deprecating and end badly. ‘I ended up in a field, in the mud, the car wouldn't start and it started raining' – the perfect end to a British story. I love telling a story in which I run myself down. It can be really funny, but what's not so good is to set that negative story for my day,
or for my life, with that same self-deprecating gloom. It anticipates failure. We also have a problem with the way Americans seem to be so positive; it seems boastful. It's a bit like the way they say, ‘Have a nice day.' At first I thought it sounded pretty hokey, but it's actually a good thing to say to someone and I don't see the problem now.

There's another whole box of tricks called NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming. In brief, it goes along with ‘And the Word was made flesh.' What you say will manifest. It's the next step on from:

‘As you think, so you are.
As you imagine, so you become.'

Positive intentions bring positive results.

Have a successful day. Make that decision early on. When you fire an arrow, you make the trajectory higher than where you know the arrow will fall. I set the sights on my tasks in a similar way.

The Co-Creative White Brotherhood Medical Assistance Program (MAP) is fascinating. It's a personal healing, diagnostic and wellness system that draws on the energy and wisdom of a collective of non-terrestrial beings known as ‘The Ascended Masters' or ‘Great White Brotherhood'. Despite the connotations of the name, the group includes both males and females and a rainbow of complexions. As I said before, I'm a spiritual bungee jumper. If it's not going to kill me or anyone else I'll try anything that's been recommended to me by a reliable source.

The MAP system involves lying down in a comfortable room, repeating an evocation that you read from a book to surround
yourself with a protective field of psychic energy, and then calling on your personal medical assistance programme team. It sounded very unlikely when I first thought about trying it but when I did I was amazed to experience being visited by a French doctor, who looked incredibly like Agatha Christie's character, Hercule Poirot. When he appeared and started poking me I could feel it physically. There were other people with him. I noticed a very attractive woman among them. She looked as though she was in her early forties. Her hair was tied up and her styling suggested 1940s wartime.

‘It's Mummy,' I suddenly thought. She turned to me in a manner that seemed to say, ‘Yes, it is me.' ‘Mummy, I've got to talk to you,' I said. ‘I've desperately wanted to see you.' She looked at me as if to say, ‘What's the problem?'

At the time I had a particularly challenging and sensitive family issue that was taking up a disproportionate amount of my energy. Her response was so contrary to what I would have said or thought myself, and so unexpected, it convinced me of MAP's truth and validity. She said things to me that I really didn't want to hear and found very hard to accept. They were far from what I would have ‘made' her say if I'd been conjuring her up in my imagination.

I'm not sure if she said it, or simply communicated it to me, but she let me know that from where she was looking she could see that everything was perfect – exactly as it was meant to be and that I needn't be so concerned. She let me know that everyone was doing exactly what they were meant to be doing and that everything would be OK. It was really most odd.

What was strange, and interesting, was actually being able to physically feel the MAP team poking me. Whether they were
actually there but in some parallel dimension, or being channelled through my imagination, I have no idea. What I do know is that the team diagnosed a problem with my right breast. I had a mammogram the next day which revealed a slight abnormality. Fortunately it didn't require surgery.

You can use the programme whenever you require some kind of medical assistance – be it physical or mental. I find the process enormously helpful and completely effective, and it was absolutely amazing to meet my mother as one of the great doctors in the sky.

You might be thinking, ‘Stephanie, all that really does sound totally preposterous and hokey Californian psychobabble.' But I'm someone who gets to work on time, knows my lines, and functions very well in the real world. When everything's going well I can tell you how to put on eyeliner and lipstick and what it's like to be a star in Hollywood, but life doesn't always go beautifully and we need to be able to help ourselves when we're down on the floor. I can also function even better if I'm maintaining a very different set of priorities to the ones I take on as commercial commitments – priorities that involve me exploring spiritual purpose. I'm only doing what the three psychics said I would. It wasn't clever of me to nearly end up seriously hurting somebody when I put destiny to the test, driving head-on towards that lorry. It's been worth slowly re-learning the way I think, and now I know I want to live the rest of my life happily and consciously.

When we worked together, the wonderful Ron Lacey, who played the Nazi General in
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
, summed up the kind of character it took to work in our profession: ‘Stephanie, the art of it is down to being able to be completely humble and utterly arrogant at the same time.' You have to be able to take criticism and rejection while maintaining the confidence to get up and try again, time and time again. The humility has to be real; the arrogance is just a confidence trick.

When I was working on
The Colbys
I took a couple of days out to do a Shakespeare symposium in Houston with Miriam Margolyes, Ian Ogilvy and John Neville. During the symposium John Neville recited Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 – better known as
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
He did it while looking straight into my eyes. It was incredibly beautiful. When we got back to Los Angeles, a limousine was waiting for me outside the airport. As I was getting in I noticed John standing at the bus stop. I asked
him if he'd like a lift. ‘No,' he replied, ‘I'm fine.' ‘You truly are,' I thought. It's only transport. Catching a bus will also get you home. When you're as consummately skilled as John Neville you don't need a limousine. It's just surface. Even after she'd become very successful, Maggie Smith used to catch the Tube.

I remember getting into a lift with Heather Chasen while we were doing the series
Marked Personal
. It was 1974 and we were both wearing fur coats. We looked at each other and started laughing. We knew the series was being axed and there we were, wearing the fabric of success. You have to stay humble, all the time fully believing you deserve your every success, and never getting out of the habit of catching the No. 23 bus.

Kindness is so important. Ultimately, it's the greatest wisdom. When our mother died, my friends Philip and Steve took my sister Didi and me to Mexico. It was fabulous fun and, while we were there, because of the healing work they did with her, Didi felt safe enough to be able to let go and cry.

When you nurture others, you nurture yourself. Acts of generosity are actually quite selfish. When you do a good deed, you get back so much more. So be selfish – help a neighbour.

When I was 17 and working at the Liverpool Everyman I got sent to the laundrette with a big bag of laundry. I'd never been to a laundrette before. Walking in, I saw a tramp sitting in the corner with a bottle, talking to himself. I ran straight back to the theatre. I returned with someone to look after me. When we arrived they looked at the man and said, ‘Hi, Tony.' Then they
turned to me. ‘Where's the tramp?' It was Anthony Hopkins with a bleach bottle, learning his lines. That was the first time we met.

When we were in Hong Kong, working together on
To Be the Best
, Anthony was taking the brave and fantastic step of stopping drinking, once and for all. I'd get the biggest yachts lined up for happy jaunts out, but he refused to come with us. ‘Thank you, Stephanie,' he'd say, ‘but something will annoy me and I know what I'll want to do – but I appreciate being invited.'

Some years later I was at a big charity event for the Coen brothers. Holly Hunter had given a speech, then Sigourney Weaver had followed that, and then the prize for the raffle was drawn. I won it. I was thrilled. ‘How lovely,' I thought. I went up to the stage and suddenly realized it was like winning a scratch card at the Oscars. I didn't know what to do. All I could say was ‘Thank you' before turning and going back down the stairs. It felt so humiliating. Anthony Hopkins was sitting at a table right in front of the stage. He saw my embarrassment, got up from his seat and, as I was coming down the stairs, walked straight up to me.

‘Stephanie!' he exclaimed. ‘How wonderful to see you again, how are you?'

‘Embarrassed' I said, looking distraught.

‘That's all right,' he said, taking me by the arm. ‘Now, where are you sitting?' He accompanied me to my table. When we got there, I told him how grateful I was. ‘Whenever you need help,' he said to me, with absolute sincerity, ‘I'm here for you.' I was incredibly touched. How generous was that? Anthony had seen my embarrassment and had had the kindness to come to my aid. He was such a knight.

When I was working on
Venice Preserv'd
at the National Theatre, just before my near-death experience, I discovered how magnanimous Ian McKellen is.

During rehearsals Ian was coming through these enormous doors and going straight upstage. He'd be facing the audience and I'd be facing him. By doing that, he'd have the audience's full attention and all they'd see of me was my back. I was being upstaged by Ian McKellen. I thought, ‘OK, thanks,' and asked Alison Chitty, the designer, to add a 15-foot train to my costume. ‘A 15-foot train behind you?' she said. ‘You'll never manage.'

‘I will, darling,' I assured her. ‘It's the only thing about me anyone's going to notice because Ian's going straight in upstage.' ‘Really?' she asked.

‘Honestly,' I replied. ‘15 feet, please. Give them something to look at.'

We got to the first preview and burst on-stage through the door. I felt suddenly warmed by the fact that we were out of the rehearsal room. I was so relieved there were real people, ordinary people wearing cardigans, sitting in the audience. We made our entrance and Ian went upstage. I delivered my line and got a laugh. Ian came downstage. We continued the scene and I got another laugh. Ian went even further downstage. Now I was facing the audience. I thought, ‘OK, this is good. Hello, audience.' I was playing with my long train, swirling it around and really enjoying myself.

We came to the second preview and, when we burst through the big doors, Ian didn't go upstage. He went across it instead, and I got my laughs. Ian moved downstage and I got more laughs.

It was opening night. We burst through the doors and Ian went straight downstage. I was getting all my laughs and suddenly
it made total sense. What Ian McKellen does is, if he thinks he has to hold the scene together, he'll go upstage and give the audience as much as he can. If he thinks the other actors are pulling their weight, or more than pulling their weight, he's generosity itself. He'll give the scene to his fellow actors. He's fabulous. His first thought was for the audience, but I was a close second. He needed to feel confident I'd be able to step up to the mark, but once he saw I could, he gave me the stage. It became my scene; given to me by now
Sir
Ian McKellen – and ‘Sir', rightly so.

Robert Powell is another generous actor. I've worked with him several times. I once told him that, if we carried on down-staging each other, one of us was likely to fall off the stage. Another time I walked on stage, began the scene, then came out with ‘Pah, rubbish' and walked off again. I started the scene again, as if doing a second take. I didn't miss a beat and neither did Robert. Afterwards, with his lovely laugh, all he said was, ‘That was interesting'. Robert is love and generosity itself.

My sister Didi is a kind and warm person. It's why people are so drawn to her. A few months after Bill, her wonderful husband of more than 40 years, had died, my dear friend Prince Azim of Brunei invited us to Brunei for a holiday. He thought it would be good for Didi. We went, and it helped Didi enormously with her grieving process. Prince Azim is another amazingly kind and generous person.

I used to be afraid of the word ‘consciousness'. It sounded a bit like attempting a Full Lotus position. Then I realized that all it meant was being aware of what was going on. If you're aware then you're looking, and if you're really looking at a situation you can work out what's actually going on. Once you're doing that, if you need a solution you'll be able to see one.

There's a bit of a contradiction between the spiritual books that tell you to live consciously in the moment and the basic truth of simple housekeeping, which demands that you have to plan ahead. The past is over but the present informs tomorrow. In Western societies it's only really possible to live in the moment if you have a great deal of money; otherwise you need to plan ahead. You've got to be practical, but it's also important not to let the practicalities become overwhelming. I make sure I take time out to see something of beauty every day. I read a poem, laugh
with a friend, or brush my dogs with love and care. In their own way these things are beautiful.

Once you're conscious you're lumbered – there is no option not to be. If you behave in an unconscious fashion, the universe will slap you down.

Being conscious also means being able to see things as they are – without any preconceived opinions or judgement. It's hard not to make a judgement or want to control a situation.

I was on the beach with Phoebe when she was about three. While she was digging sandcastles, a little boy and his mother walked past. Phoebe looked up. This little chap had a hand that came directly out of his shoulder. She went straight over to him. Embarrassed, I started apologizing to the boy's mother. ‘Oh, no,' she said. ‘He loves to show it off.' The little guy had a great audience in Phoebe; he loved the attention. Phoebe thought having a hand stuck on your shoulder was the coolest thing. She was far too young to think anything cruel. She was just interested to see something she'd never ever come across before. She accepted the boy for what he was rather than thinking she'd prefer him to be otherwise. Little children are
so
aware of how to be. That taught me something.

I've been using animals to help me for a long time. Fox has always been a good guide for me. He certainly helped me work out how I was going to deal with Pam Ferris' character while we were rehearsing
Connie
. Sometimes I'll be in a stressful situation and I'll feel it would be good to be able to call on a higher power to help
me, but I'm thinking, ‘I don't have a stinking higher power. I've got a thumping headache – I'm stuck in Oxford Street and I can't lift my feet off the ground, let alone get in touch with my higher power.' Animal guides come into their own under these sorts of conditions. I'll make a little evocation and ask fox, crow or eagle to show me the way.

Fox is cunning, but with humour and always with a smile. Fox will show you alternative ways of approaching a situation. Crow is law. Crow reminds us to stay in line with the process. Crow reminds us that the universe has laws, and that there are consequences to our going against them.

If I'm losing objectivity I'll ask eagle for help. Being able to see things from 30 feet up gives you an entirely different perspective. Things always look very different when you can see them from above. When we're confronted by difficulty we need to fly like an eagle rather than be petrified like a rabbit or mouse. Eagle is good for big problems. You're not actually going to be able to mend a child's toy as eagle – you need mouse for that, attention to detail – but you will be able to get the perspective you need to be able to sort out a situation.

We have God nature and we have animal nature. And it's because we're so intelligent that we can be so vicious. Our animal nature encompasses a selfishness that is exclusive of other people's survival, but our God nature realizes that other people
are
our survival. Fear invokes the animal instinct for self-preservation. If we could rise above it all like eagle, and see the true nature of everything, we'd see that it all makes sense, and avoid getting snared by fear.

One day, soon after I'd turned 50, I was watching a report on television that recommended people of my age get tested
for a particular medical procedure. ‘Not likely,' I thought. ‘I'm not going to do that.' All of a sudden I heard a terrible rattling coming from the room next door. I went to look and saw a dove careening around. It took me ages to get it out, but eventually I managed. I looked it up in my animal book. Dove is messenger. I thought it best I follow up on the report I'd been watching. I got tested. I needed the procedure.