House is where the heart is

Beatrice of television's House Of Eliott. But back to stellar Stella.

The star of BBC1's hugely successful House of Eliott costume drama,

which has just returned to our Sunday-evening screens for a third

series, is as merry in person as the heroine of Much Ado About Nothing

is on the page.

We met, Gonet and I, when she was appearing in the West End of London

as Roxanne to Robert Lindsay's Cyrano de Bergerac. She swept stylishly

-- in a flurry of clothes, hat, packages, and flowers -- into the

beautiful dressing room she was sharing with the ghosts of the likes of

Ellen Terry, Vanessa Redgrave, and Maggie Smith. Just imagine, she says,

brewing up a pot of freshly-ground coffee for us, the names who have

preceded her into this gorgeous room!

You warm immediately, because somehow you don't expect stars of TV

programmes with a viewing average of 12 million an episode to be quite

so wide-eyed with wonderment. But then you just knew that Gonet was

going to be as approachable and as easy to talk to as your best chum

because did she not send herself up something rotten of late in the

incomparable French and Saunders spoof of the seamy saga that is The

House of Eliott, The House of Idiot?

Thirty-two-year-old Gonet saw it not so much as condoning a parody of

their work on the period piece, but as a compliment. In House of Idiot,

Jack's attempts to woo Beatrice, always thwarted by Bea putting work

first, were ruthlessly repeated until they took off into a heightened

burlesque where as soon as Jack entered the office Bea would pick up a

silent phone to accept an alternative invitation. It was side-splitting

stuff.

And for Gonet it was the 1990s equivalent of going on Morecambe and

Wise. ''It doesn't do any harm to laugh at yourself,'' she says,

although she is mightily protective of Beatrice Eliott, who often comes

across as a bit of a sew-and-sew in a programme which is big on frocks

and often threadbare of plot. ''There's nothing I disliked about Bea,''

says Greenock-born Gonet. ''She was not born the prettiest girl in the

world but she knows she's got something.''

Well, that must have been a challenge and a half, even for an actress

with Gonet's curriculum vitae, which includes seasons with both the

Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, where she played

Ophelia in the ill-fated Daniel Day-Lewis Hamlet. It was a painful

experience, and not one she would care to repeat.

''I have no desire to do Hamlet again, it was so very painful. Unless

I was playing Hamlet himself, of course,'' she says.

She is stunning to look at, tall and slender, with a halo of blonde

curls, now shingled into a 1920s-style bob, and vivid blue eyes. With

such physical ''disadvantages'', it must have been a real challenge to

her acting technique to make viewers believe Beatrice Eliott is anything

but drop-dead gorgeous. But you know what actors are, always doing

themselves down. Her looks? Certainly, she concedes, like most actors,

her appearance has led to some strange casting decisions on the part of

directors.

Perhaps it was the long blonde hair that did it. ''I used to hide

beneath all this hair. I used to think I wouldn't get work unless I had

long hair. It was absolute nonsense, of course.'' When she and Louise

Lombard, who plays her sister Evie in House of Eliott, won their TV

roles, one of the contract stipulations was that they should both lop

off their locks.

''We went together and sat side by side at the hairdresser's -- Louise

and I are simpatico, she is from a family of eight and very Irish -- but

immediately the hair went, I felt liberated. I have never regretted it.

Not for one moment. I went home to Nick (her partner, the actor Nicholas

Farrell) and he said, ''My God, your neck!'' A new erogenous zone?

''Absolutely! Louise said, 'do you find you keep losing your balance?' I

said, 'on the contrary, I have found my balance'. I am centred. Totally.

I feel like a different person. I don't think I'll grow it again while

I'm in my thirties, although I rather fancy the idea when I am very,

very old of being an eccentric old lady with a huge mane of curly white

hair.''

But yes, the looks do influence your career, she says. Last year,

there she was playing one of classic drama's greatest romantic heroines,

but when she was at the RSC -- where she met Farrell, who was seen

recently in To Play the King as the AC/DC royal press secretary -- she

was either being a beacon of virtue or ''a complete and utter whore''.

Her father is wheelchair-bound and has therefore seen very little of her

stage work, but he did visit Stratford to see her in The Revenger's

Tragedy, The Jew of Malta, and in Doug Lucie's play, Fashion. ''He loved

Fashion because I was playing this super-efficient secretary. He just

couldn't bear the fact that I was playing a whore in the others.''

Her mother was much more pragmatic about it, perhaps because she was

an English teacher for 18 years and she always encouraged a love of

literature and language in her sons and daughters. ''Not that she forced

it down our throats,'' insists Gonet. ''I simply responded very early to

literature and the world of books.'' In fact, announces Gonet, proudly,

it's her mum whom I should be interviewing.

After giving birth to and bringing up 12 children -- Stella is the

seventh child -- in Greenock, her mother went to university in Glasgow

to read English at the age of 41, ''but she's always been there for us,

a very lovely and loving influence, so calm and quiet in the background.

She has been a great role model.'' Mrs Gonet retired last year, writes

poetry, attends writers' workshops, and is forever winning poetry

competitions. ''I keep telling her to publish an anthology of her work.

But we are always wondering what on earth she is going to do next, she

has so much energy.''

Childhood was wonderfully happy and loving, although you had to fight

your corner to make yourself heard above the din of the other 11. ''We

are a bit loud and very, very noisy,'' laughs Gonet. Her parents -- her

father is Polish, her mother a Scot -- met during the war. ''The Polish

and the Scots, it's a good mixture, particularly in the alcohol

stakes,'' she says.

''I feel very Scottish, although I have a lot of my father's volatile

Polish temper inside me as well. I'm their middle child and I always say

to mum, it's no wonder I became an actor -- it was the only way I could

get any attention. You were always going, 'Excuse me, I'm here too'.

Suddenly, I'm up onstage and I have everyone's attention. The first time

I did it, I remember thinking, 'I'm going to stay here'.''

At high school, the 14-year-old Gonet was cast as a 62-year-old Jewish

mother in Fiddler on the Roof. ''We had never done drama as a subject at

school, but that was it! I absolutely loved the whole experience. I had

discovered something. I joined a youth theatre and then at 17 went to

the RSAMD in Glasgow. I adored it.'' Her first job was as an ASM at the

Gaiety Theatre, Ayr, where Andy Cameron was playing Dame in Jack and the

Beanstalk. Then she was cast as Bernadette in the Traverse's Slab Boys

trilogy, and a new writers' season at the Royal Court followed.

''I had never been to London in my life before, and I couldn't believe

it. Then I met someone, you know how it is, and I wanted to stay. But

it's only since I met Nick that I have actually -- dare I say it? --

slightly rooted myself. I have always felt dead footloose. A vagabond, a

strolling player. I was the original bag lady. Until quite recently, I

lived in Nick's house, we didn't even share a mortgage because I still

had this I-might-just-go-off-somewhere thing.''

Now Gonet and Farrell -- they have been together for more than six

years -- have bought a new house together and would like to start a

family. With the final series of House of Eliott in the can her diary is

blank, and that's the way she likes it. ''I never plan ahead. It would

be foolish. This fame thing, which is lovely while it lasts, could all

end tomorrow. Anthony Valentine was a guest in the last series of House

of Eliott and at one time he was never off the telly in the seventies

and then suddenly it all stopped for him. He told us the worst thing you

can do in the world is to convince yourself it's all going to go on

forever.

''For now though, it's just so nice being recognised in the street,

people are always pleased to see you and say 'hello' as if they have

known you all their lives. Sometimes though I think it would be heaven

to go into Marks and Sparks without someone asking you whether they

should buy this or that jumper,'' she sighs.

This is what comes of allegedly designing and wearing all those fab

frocks, isn't it? ''Yes, but aren't the clothes sheer bliss? They are

absolute heaven to wear. But no, you don't get to keep them and you

certainly can't even buy them; they all go back to the BBC's wardrobe

department to be used again. I wanted to buy the Chinese tunic I wore in

the last series, which had been embroidered by my sister, Debbie, who is

a designer, but no, the BBC wouldn't hear of it.''