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During the taping of SUN's earthquake and subsequent tidalwave last month, Lesley-Anne Down (Olivia) was happy to be land-locked. "I haven't had good experiences with water in my life" says the actress. "I have nearly been killed at sea on three different occasions." One was during the filming of the movie Rough Cut in the late 1970's. It was nighttime, and Down was headed back to shore after shooting a scene in a yacht four miles out to sea. "Normally, it took 45 minutes to get [back]," she says. "But on this particular night, we were in a little boat. The water was very rough and the engine lost power." As the sea raged around them, "we were told to lie down to add weight to the boat," she recalls. "The captain kept calling for a 'Mayday,' but no one came." It took four hours to get home, and "when we got to the docks, I fainted. Later, the captain told us he thought we weren't going to make it." Needless to say, Down concludes, "I was thrilled that I was not part of SUN's little Poseidon Adventure".
Lesley-Anne Down is the picture of parental bliss. Looking trim and toned a mere three months after giving birth, the English-born actress and her American film director husband, Don E. Fauntleroy, are cherishing every moment with their new son, George Edward, born March 11. "We are truly blessed," says Down, looking positively radiant in comfy sweats and without a scrap of make-up. "I don't know if there are words that can express it when you love somebody as much as I love Don - and you've been together for 13 years and you've wanted more than anything to have a baby but haven't been able to for various reasons."
Down recalls that during a procedure to have a birth control removed, her doctor had told her: "Don't worry, the chances of you getting pregnant at your age are slim to none. "Three weeks later, the actress learned she was 'with child.' The momentous news wasn't without complications. During her pregnancy, Down developed gestational diabetes. "I was a diabetic and didn't know it," she explains. "When they told me, I found it a bit of a chore because you're instantly having to take your blood sugar four, five times a day. But after four days of trying different foods, I worked out how I could keep my blood-sugar level down just with diet because I didn't want to have to shoot insulin. The best thing is Japanese food - sojabeans and miso soup. No white refined carbohydrates and citrus fruits. A very sensible diet. And exercise! That helps too. The only time my blood-sugar got dangerously high was when I gave in and had a bloody old McDonalds," she recalls. "The supersize fries with the vanilla milkshake!" Down thought she'd require a surgical procedure to deliver the baby. "He was completely 'breached,' so I was scheduled for the good old C-section," she explains. "That weekend, Don was terribly ill with the flu. I didn't want to sleep with him because I couldn't risk getting sick, so I was on the couch. I lay down and slept and slept - I didn't realize how tired I was - and Georgie turned by Monday." Still, doctors induced Down's labor a week early. "Because I had the diabetes, they put me in a high-risk category and didn't want to wait," she says. "The drip started to kick in about 12:30 lunchtime, and he was born at five to ten that night. Did I have drugs?" Down laughs. "Do I look stupid?" The actress gained just 23 pounds during her pregnancy and lost the extra weight within weeks. "I was very active during my pregnancy," she notes. "I was working, marching up and down the stairs. There were times when I just wanted to wish the world away and put my feet up and snooze, but I couldn't. There was never a moment. That's probably why I didn't put on more."
Statistics show that 30 to 40 percent of women who develop diabetes after their pregnancy. "It's almost consistently in women who haven't lost the baby weight, don't exercise and don't have sensible health habits," Down explains. "So that's a definite motivation for me." Even though she returned to her normal weight, Down admits there have been changes in her body. "The shape is different," she says. "Sort of that square cartoon middle from the boobs to the hips. I've got a ski-machine here by the telly, and I do that every other day for 20 minute This late-in-life pregnancy has been easier than the first time around, admits the actress, who has one son, Jack, 15, from a previous marriage. "I put it down to brain power, which I think has increased somewhat since I was 28 years old. And keeping busy. Not letting yourself turn into one of those getting-bigger-by-the-moment, I'll-just-have-another-cookie types." Down claims she has more stamina now than she's ever had. "When I was pregnant with Jack, I didn't work at all until he was 10 months old and I went back to England to do a miniseries, The last days of Pompeii. "While I was pregnant then, I remember having lunch, which was made for me, and getting into the pool and floated on my back, because that gut makes you float easily, of course. So the beached baby whale would float about in Bel-Air, naked, because there was nothing I could fit into! What a dreadful sight must that have been!"
Down parenting experience includes being mom to her son and two stepdaughters, Julianna, 16, and Season, 18. "They were thrilled," she explains, recalling how she announced the impending arrival of a new sibling. "Julianna knew three weeks before we told them. It's so funny, they had a little sixth sense."
The children helped keep the home in order when Down first returned home from the hospital with George. "The day I got back, Season was here and she was brilliant because, needless to say, I wasn't ready for the marathon," recalls the actress. "She was sensational. Things like loads of laundry just kept vanishing."
Down has also invested in some permanent help. "Iım kind of a fatalist and I kept thinking Mary Poppins will appear on the doorstep," she admits with a laugh. "And we do have a Mary Poppins now, except she never wears any shoes and has cats on leashes. Marcy is a marvelous girl. She used to baby-sit for our other kids."
Ironically, one of the reasons Down and her husband didn't start their family sooner is because of their own children. "Don and I weren't married for the first two years we were together, so we couldnıt do it then," she says. "For a long time, whenever we'd talk about it, Jack would just fall apart, cry and say, 'You wonıt love me anymore.' Going back and forth to his father's house and having to leave his mum and brother, it would have been very difficult for him. With the girls, there may have been some jealousy, but they're big enough to deal with it. When they were little, they wouldn't have been able to."
Down never entertained the thought of leaving Sunset Beach after George's birth. "Aaron Spelling was great," she says. "He was incredibly worried. He thought I was going to need four or five months off because Heather Locklear had taken quite a long time off of Melrose Place when she had her baby. I just took a month."
A part-time schedule allows Down to spend quality time at work and at home. "Theyıve given me the hours I want. I get there at 6:30 a.m., then Iım generally in a car coming home no later than noon. I'm so happy doing what I'm doing. It's very much a family."
Her SUN counterpart, Olivia, was already pregnant on the show when Down learned of her own impending bundle of joy. She was able to drop the extra costume padding and didn't have to fret over strategic staging. "I only had four weeks of carrying large boxes in front of me," she chuckles.
Bringing another young soul into the world has ad both a rational and a spiritual effect on Down. "There's always a tomorrow when you're 28," she says. "There's another baby, another husband, always another everything. Mortality isn't important. We tend to think, 'Oh, God, 60, I suppose thatıs old.' Well, when George is 15, I'm going to be 60. There are all sorts of important things like trust funds and education that you have to set up. And to think about if anything did happen to us, who would he be with? All those questions you just have to pay a bit more attention to." But Down is overjoyed to have the opportunity. "Iıve cried a lot and still do," she says. "But only because my heart is so full of happiness and glory and wonder and magic and God, that all I need is just one more little drop of another happiness or emotion, and there's just no more room in my heart and it just comes up in the form of tears. It's painful, actually. It's a pain of enormousness that just fills your every cell... and it's wonderful."
Soap In Depth Magazine, February 1999
Parental Guidance
Like her character, Down is a new mother. But the similarities end there. The actress' home life - like her closet - is worlds apart from that of dilettante Olivia. "I have to say that since George was born, we've been out at night only twice," says Down, who relishes the quality time that she and her husband of a dozen years, director of photography Don FauntLeRoy, share with their 8-month old son.
While Olivia's motherhood has been fraught with desperation and scheming, Down's latest go-round as a mom has been downright idyllic. "George is so adorable, and just a very easy child," she says. FauntLeRoy's daughters, Season, 18, and Juliana, 17, and Down's son, Jack, 16, have proven to be good, responsible babysitters for their new little brother. And, adds Down, "Don and I both have our lives and work sorted out so that, for the most part, one or the other of us is there with him."
Even the labor was relatively stressfree. "It was an easy-peasy thing," Down says. "It was just, 'Thank you very much. Open the champagne!' Well, it wasn't quite like that, but verging on it."
Having a child later in life has its pluses and minuses. "It's a double edged sword," says Down, who gave birth to Jack when she was 28. "When you're younger, you have more exuberance, more energy. But is all that energy spent on the child? I think probably not. When you get older, you become much more into the child's general well-being."
"I have to say, though," she adds, "it's more exhausting, especially for things like your back. But perhaps that has something to do with the lack of sit-ups."
Despite the back trouble, Down says that she's making smarter parenting decisions this time. "You are completely selfless when you are older. You give more time and you give more of yourself," she explains. "There are many different choices that you make because you have done it before. I do believe, and so does Don, that we are doing it better this time."
Mother From Another Planet
On the other hand, Olivia is far from selfless. Though she's attentive and loving toward her baby son, Trey, she's quite the opposite toward her grown daughter, Caitlin. "What Olivia is trying to do, which is to be a part of [Trey's] life, is terrific," Down observes. "I just think she's going about it in a really idiotic way."
When Down first heard about Olivia's plot to break up Caitlin's marriage to Cole - Olivia's ex-lover - in order to win back Trey, the actress says that she had one thought: "She belongs with Gregory! They're two little peas in a pod. Here, her husband is doing ghastly, underhanded, nasty things. And then, when it suits her, she ends up doing the same thing at the drop of a hat!"
If Down could give Olivia any advice, she'd tell her to take a good, long look at herself - literally. "I think soap operas are a little like going to the psychiatrist," she ventures. "They show you the insanity of human relationships, of how star-crossed lovers happen and how people get divorced who shouldn't, and how relationships go wrong - or go right sometimes. Very often you're mirrored in a character or a plotline - not in quite so outrageous way - but in small details. So, you can get something from it. You can learn how to deal with your own life and your own marriage and your own kids. So, the bottom line is, I think Olivia needs to watch some soap operas! SUNSET BEACH should be at the top of her list, followed by DAYS OF OUR LIVES."
What Will Happen Next!
While Down isn't one of those actresses who takes her character's personality home with her (thank heavens!), Olivia's troubles do weigh heavily on her subconscious. "Sometimes I dream about Olivia," she confides. "I'm shaking her, telling her what to do. I get upset for Olivia sometimes. She's so unhappy and so miserable, and I don't like to see anybody in pain."
The way things are going, though, Olivia's pain can only get worse before it gets better. "The best thing that could possibly happen for Caitlin is for Olivia to leave Sunset Beach," Down states. "But for her son, Trey, that is not the best thing for Trey. Does she do the best thing for Caitlin, or does she do the best thing for Trey? She can't do the best thing for both her children, they need different things. So, she's in a completely no-win situation."
As an actress, however, Down loves these trying twists and turns of Olivia's life. "The more dramatic and outrageous, the more fun," she exclaims with a smile.
And, wardrobe misgivings aside, Down hopes to be snapped into Olivia's business suits for years and years to come. "I'm so happy doing what I do," she says. "The feeling, the camaraderie, the niceness of everybody... it's very different on our set. And I do hope that it goes on for a long time."
Sunset Beach's tough Olivia is a real-life softy. Lesley-Anne Down has three dogs and two cats - all with their own "hard luck" stories. Debbie-Doggie, a black Doberman/Pitbull/Lab mix, is an adoptee from the Agoura, California, animal shelter. "We drove by and on impulse just decided to go in and get a dog," Down explains "There was this one big cage and I saw no dog inside. Finally, there was some movement and the shelter worker said, "Oh, she's frightened; she won't let you near her." "I know that you have to be a star to get out of a pound - you need personality, etiquette; you can't hide So I just said, "I'll take responsibility for myself, just let me go in there." Down literally crawled into the cage, sat down and began talking to the pooch. Two minutes later "She just rushed me - jumped up and started licking my face, kissing me," she recalls. "It was so precious. We took her home right away - I even gave up the front seat to her, but she insisted on sitting with me in the back seat."
Blossom came through a good Samaritan friend "My friend called me about the dog she'd found that had been hit by a car and was in terrible condition" Down says. "At the time, we had three dogs and I didn't really want another. Still, I said if no one else wanted the dog, we'd take her" And that's what happened. Down and her stepdaughter, Julianna, couldn't believe their eyes when they went to pick up the convalescing dog "She was the funniest-looking thing. Whitish-gray, no hair, huge Chihuahua ears, a bald belly, shrunken legs and tail." Down says "We decided to call her Blossom because we figured that's what she'd do. "Down's had her third dog, Harry, who's now 12, since he was a puppy. "I never could figure out what breed Harry was - he was truly unique!" she says. One day Down was thumbing through a dog book and was stunned to come across a photo of Harry! "I showed him, the photo and said, 'Look Harry, you're a Swedish fox hound!' it was as if he found his identity - he proceeded to go outside and let ou t a big, long howl. He's done one of those daily ever since. Joining the canine clan are Natchez, a striped gray tabby, and Moshi, a marmalade-colored kitty. Down and her husband, director Don Fauntleroy, found Natchez in a parking lot near the Natchez, Mississippi, set of the TV mini-series North and South "We smuggled him home to LA. He was the hit of first class on the plane!" says the actress.
Moshi came from a friend who had to move "She was an indoor cat her entire life." Down says "One day, she got out and disappeared for a week. We were so upset and figured she was dead, until one night at 3 am, she turned up in the house. We couldn't believe she'd found her way back, let alone gotten inside." Now all five pets have the run of the house, and sleep whenever they wish. Down is amazed that every cat she's had over the past 12 years has taken tremendously to Debbie. "They go to her, they lick her, they sleep with her," she says. "None of our other dogs has had that impact. They just always gravitate to Debbie" Down, who is expecting a new baby in March tells SON she will hold off on getting any more pets. But given her history, we'd say the pitter-patter of little feet in her home will always include the four-legged kind.
Most soap stars have a team of make-up artists and hairstylist attending to them before they go in front of the cameras. Not Lesley-Anne Down (Olivia), who, surprisingly, does her own hair and make-up. "It's not because I do it better than they can, because I am sure that I don't," she says. It's just that sitting in the stylist's chair puts her right to sleep! "There are two things in my life that always made my brain fuzz up," she admits. "The first one is math, and the second one is people doing my hair or face. Six months ago, I had my hair cut here, and I dozed off, snoring within a minute." Don't believe her? "It's true," says SUN hairdresser Brooks Stenstorm. "The second I started on her hair, she fell asleep. It was like she was in a trance. It's too relaxing for her." And that, Down says, conflicts her acting. "When I am working," she says, "I need to be energized. I can't afford to have that fuzz brain!"
SUN's Lesley-Anne Down is a one-woman animal rescue squad. Just check out her three dogs and two cats.
Sunset Beach's tough Olivia is in real-life a softie. Lesley-Anne Down has three dogs and two cats - all with their owb "hard luck" stories. Debie-Doggie, a black Doberman/pitbull/Lab mix, is an adoptee from the Agoura, California, animal shelter. "We drove by and on impulse just decided to go in and get a dog," Down explains. "There was this one big cage and I saw no dog inside. Finally, there was some movemant and the shelter worker said, 'Oh, she's frightened and skittish; she won't let you near her.'"
"I know that you have to be a star to get out of the pound - you need personality, etiquette; you can't hide. So, I just said, 'I'll take responsibilty for myself, just let me get in there.'"
Down literally crawled into the cage, sat down and began talking to the pooch. Two minutes later, "She just rushed me - jumped up and started licking my face, kissing me," she recalls. "It was so precious. We took her home right away - I even gave up the front seat to her, but she insisted on sitting with me in the back seat."
Blossom came through a good Samaritan freind. "My friend called me about a dog she'd found that had been hit by a car and was in terrible condition," Down says. "At the time, we had three dogs and I didn't really want another. Still, I said if no one else wanted the dog, we'd take her."
And that's just what happened. Down and her stepdaughter, Juliana, couldn't believe their eyes when they went to pick up the convalescing dog.
"She was the funniest-looking thing: witish-grey, no hair, huge Chihuahua ears, a bald belly, shrunken legs and tail," Down says. "We decided to call her Blossom, because we figured that's what she's do."
Down had her third dog, Harry, who's now 12, since he was a puppy. "I never could figure out what breed Harry was - he was truly unique!" she says. One day Down was thumbing through a dog book and was stunned to come accross a photo of... Harry! "I showed him the photo," she reports, "and said, 'Look, Harry, you're a Swedish fox hound!' It was as if he'd found his identity - he proceeded to go outside and let out a big, long howl. He's done one of those daily even since."
Joining the cainine clan are Natchez, a striped grey tabby, and Moshi, a marmalade-colored kitty.
Down and her husband, director Don Fauntleroy, found Natchez in a paring lot near the Natchez, Mississippi, set of the TV miniseries North and South. "We smuggled him home to L.A. - he was the hit of first class on the plane!" says the actress.
Moshi came from a friend who had to move. "She was an indoor cat her entire life," Down says. "One day, she got out and disappeared for a week. We were so upset and figured she was dead, until one night at 3 a.m., she turned up in the house. We couldn't believe she'd found her way back, let along gotten inside."
Now all five pets have the run of the house, and sleep whereever they wish. Down is amazed that every cat she's had over the past 12 years has taken tremendously to Debbie. "They go to her, they lick her, they sleep with her," she says. "None of our other dogs has had that impact. they just always gravitate to Debbie."
Down, who is expecting a new baby in March, tells SON she will hold off on getting any more pets. But given her history, we'd say the pitter-patter of little feet in her home will always include the four-legged kind.
Hollywood Cost Her a Lover, But Everything Else Is Up For Lesley-Anne Down
Lesley-Anne Down celebrated her sweet-16th birthday in an unusual way for an English lass-she moved in with her lover. "She had no hangups about sex," says her loyal dad, who had led the family's uninhibited dinner table discussions. "She knew as much as anybody by the time she was 12." Even then Lesley-Anne's precocious beauty threatened men with cardiac arrest. "But when they'd find out how old I was, they'd just run away," she giggles. At 16, Lesley-Anne was named "the prettiest teenager in England" by the Daily Mirror. Now, at 24, she's the deadliest new femme fatale in movies and is leaving critics gasping for analogies ("a young Elizabeth Taylor") instead of adjectives. "She could be another Vivien Leigh," asserts Bruce Robinson, the older man (he was 24) she moved in with nine years ago. "Or," he adds tartly-ref erring to a career starlet-"she could be another Susan George."
There's evidence of both. Down was originally less George than Georgina, the, flirtatious Bellamy ward who provided PBS's Upstairs, Downstairs with some of its most spirited moments. Not that she was about to be typecast in Edwardian propriety. Lesley won her next role, in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, by, among other things, agreeing to a topless scene that Maud Adams had refused. And as a gold-digging voluptuary in this year's racy Harold Robbins epic, The Betsy, Lesley's luscious nudity contributed mightily to its "condemned" rating from the U.S. Catholic Conference, which called the movie "supremely trashy."
The latest thing Lesley-Anne seems to be shedding, though, is her long relationship with her first lover, striving-actor-turned-screenwriter Robinson. They had already survived mutual seven-year itches two years ago when Lesley flipped for a singer she won't name and Bruce compensated with an extracurricular affair of his own. Then her fling "died through necessity" (i.e., Bruce). So after nine years and only one lapse apiece, she says, "in this business that amounts to faithfulness." But then suddenly last spring, she moved out of their Wimbledon row house to crash with friends and in hotel rooms. Rumors buzzed of more than a professional interest between Lesley-Anne and Harrison (Star Wars) Ford, her co-lead in the just-wrapped Hanover Street, but she stoutly insists that she and Bruce "decided not to be together while we were working so hard." By her clocking, their togetherness had been reduced to "half an hour three times a week, which was terribly unfair to both of us." "She's got to do it," agrees Robinson bravely. "I want neither to stop it nor be steamrollered by it. So I'm on the side of the road watching it go by." Now they're talking about a summer-end "conference" on their future-but only after Lesley-Anne completes shooting The Great Train Robbery with Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.
Down's nonstop schedule may owe to her working-class upbringing in London's shabby Clapham section. Her father, a caretaker at a military depot, and mother, once an amateur singer dancer, encouraged her early modeling career. "My childhood ended at 1 O," calls Lesley-Anne, who tried to combine her profession with schooling (when she was 12 her parents were hauled into court on a truancy rap). After a bit part at 15 with Olivia Hussey In All the Right Noises, Down quit both school and modeling to concentrate on acting in "tacky television, tacky touring plans and tacky films. I was always being raped," she recalls. "The exciting thing about being an actress is that you can live out all your fantasies."
It took two seasons of Upstairs to give Down her touch of class. "That launched me," she says. "You can't kick a gift horse in the mouth." Yet she complains, "I'm so fed up with roles that have me asking for a cup of tea and holding it in the air." She likewise scoffs at her current sexpot image: "I don't think of myself as that. As an actress my ambition is to make a lot of films and be good in them."
When not working, Lesley-Anne rummages through antique and junk shops collecting illustrated children's books (she owns more than 200) and fusses for hours on her makeup - though at home with her parents she luxuriates in sloppiness. She dances, though concedes that recent disco sorties "make me feel terribly old-fashioned-I was almost still doing the twist." When she gets the chance, Lesley-Anne enjoys cooking (especially chili or pasta), but her steadiest diet is filter cigarettes (visiting home, she rolls her own from her dad's tobacco pack) and champagne, which she's not above drinking from a paper cup ("I'm not proud"). She intermittently sees her younger sister, Angela, 19, a language student and au pair girl in Paris, who her parents say is the real beauty in the family. As for planting roots, Down says that she and Bruce never considered marrying. She does plan to have a child someday but "not while I'm so busy. It wouldn't be fair to the child or to me, having worked so hard to get where I am."
Some of the stresses behind Down's lovely facade poke through. She's terrified of the phone and, rather than answer, often buries it under the pillow and lets it ring. It Lesley-Anne's eagerness to accommodate seems to be turning her personality into Silly Putty, Robinson argues, "She knows that the world she's dealing with is extremely facile and plastic. And if those are the rules, she's going to play them better than anybody else." Lesley-Anne reluctantly concurs. "I don't know what my own personality is now. All the travel and changes become the reality. The more work that comes, the more you need it to survive, and the more ambitious you get," she frets. "And the more successful you become the less a base you have to hang onto."
People Weekly - July 24, 1978
By: FRED HAUPTFUHRE
LESLEY-ANNE DOWN (OLIVIA): Coming from prietime television and film, Lesley-Anne Down made a great transition to the small screen, brining comedy, heart and compassion to Olivia Richards. An alcoholic who swore off drinking for the sake of her family; a mother determined to look out for her children; a wife who stood by her husband until his manipulations destroyed everything she loved - Down created a wonderful character.
Sunset Beach's Olivia Richards knows turbulence. While pregnant, she was lured to a remote cabin where the nefarious Annie drugged her and brought on premature labor. Robbed of her memory (from the drugs) and her baby (whom she thinks is dead but is actually being raised by her daughter Caitlin), Olivia is now trying to piece together the shards of that broken evening.
Throughout this ordeal Lesley-Anne Down has been mesmerizing, but her performance reached a crescendo when Olivia returned home from the hospital this week. First, Olivia was confronted with her new "grandson," which drove her out of the room in tears. Down was heartbreaking immediately afterward, when Olivia told Caitlin that Caitlin's newborn "gift" was something not meant for Olivia. Down's calm yet powerful delivery of the reasons she was "being punished" brought Caitlin - and surely countless viewers - to tears.
Later, Down let Olivia's agony wash over her completely when she walked into the vacant nursery. She conveyed Olivia's utter fragility and despair - amazingly without words - as she recoiled from the empty crib, the haunting cries of a baby echoing around her. Then, pulling a baby blanket to her face, she let it caress her cheek. Still no words were necessary, because one only had to look past Down's manic expression and into her eyes to see the depth of Olivia's confusion and loss. When the words finally came, Olivia could only say, "My baby!" over and over, swearing that she had heard her baby cry at birth. Rocking back and forth on the nursery floor - hands at times balled into flailing fists and at other times pulling at her hair.
