Britt Ekland returns to the stage at Darlington with a dangerous farce linked to sex and lies. She talks to Viv Hardwick about the sex and lies in her own life and why she hated the recent film about ex-husband Peter Sellers.

MOST middle-aged males will be disturbed to learn that legendary sex siren Britt Ekland claims to have lost interest in men. That doesn't stop the Swedish star purring at the thought that those who remember her as Bond girl Mary Goodnight will still go weak at the knees when she enters the room.

"You've made my day saying that," laughs 62-year-old Ekland as she prepares to bring a new touring version of the farce Just Desserts! to Darlington's Civic Theatre next week.

She jokes about setting her tiny chihuahua on admirers these days.

"That scares them off. The older you get the more ridiculous is the thought that there is an ideal man out there," she says, although her third husband, Stray Cats drummer Jim McDonnell, probably came the closest during a 12-year relationship which ended in 1992.

"I'm very lucky because either I'm a wonderful person or else they are because the men in my life have all stayed friends. But now I'm not looking."

After a two-year break from touring theatre, Ekland agreed to take on Marc Camoletti's follow-up to Don't Dress For Dinner which has been adapted for the English stage by Tudor Gates. She plays deceived wife Juliette who doesn't know her husband has promised her services to the angry other half of another woman. And just to complicate matters, Juliette's husband hires a high class hooker to act as his wife without realising that Ekland's character will also be attending the dinner.

She says: "I got involved in the play because they asked me and it's interesting because it hadn't been done before so it means that I would be creating the role of Juliette. When someone takes the role in future they will have to look at what I did and that's never happened to me before on stage. I've done Run For You Wife and See How They Run as part of West End runs, but this is very exciting for me.

"You know how tricky farce is and it plays games with your mind. There's also plenty of dashing in and out of rooms, mistaken identities and people hiding behind curtains and sofas."

The other long-running episode in Ekland's life is her well-documented lovelife which includes Warren Beatty, Ryan O'Neal, Rod Stewart and comedy legend Peter Sellers.

Asked about it now, she replies: "What you have to understand is I can't cut out that part of my life and deny it ever happened. As you get older you look at things in retrospect and you're much kinder to that memory than maybe you were 20 years ago. That was my life, that's what I did and I think it would be terrible if I said spiteful things about the people from my past."

Ekland did hate being forced into the limelight by last year's release of a movie called The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers. She was married to Sellers for five years when she was 20 and he was 37. The Swedish actress opposed the film because she didn't like the book by Roger Lewis on which it was based.

"It's perfectly correct that I didn't want to take part in any project linked to the book. I never talked to the writer of the book, so he had no information regarding our life from me. When you then see a film which is based partly on your life with someone, and bears no resemblance to what it was, you have to be disappointed because it could have been so incredibly fantastic.

"The film makers should have used me one way or another and they didn't."

She says that even the pictures of her with Charlize Theron, who became Ekland in the movie, at the launch weren't an acceptance or endorsement.

"I just went to see the film. I couldn't change anything and I realised the only way I would be able to see the film - because they weren't going to let me see it first - would be to attend. As it happens Charlize is a very lovely and gracious person and very beautiful... and very tall! Believe you me, even with high heels on, she was towering over me," laughs Ekland who is 5ft 5inches compared to the six foot Theron.

There was one scene where I hit Peter and that was how our marriage ended. Our marriage didn't end like that and I've never hit anyone in my life. So I'm sitting there thinking 'what? that's not the truth', but then you have to remember it's a piece of fiction and I'd forgotten that. You have to switch your brain to fiction."

Does she mind her private life being re-written like this?

"You know I can't do anything to stop that happening. I just have to take it and get on with my life," she sighs.

TV at Christmas brought her face-to-face with Weakest Link gorgon Ann Robinson. "You know, to be quite honest, I don't know what possessed me to do it. I hated every minute. I hate the programme but you sort of do it as a dutiful actor," says Ekland who thought that Robinson might be friendlier because both are fund-raisers for the Alzheimer's Society. The actress speaks movingly about losing her mother to a condition which left her unable to eat in an institution.

"That was a happy day in my life when I could finally put my mother in the ground and mourn her because I couldn't do that while she was alive even though she no longer knew me. That's why I am very, very pro euthanasia because I've been through it and know what it is."

Ekland has also recently gone on record as admitting that she's suffering from osteoporosis, partly as a result of constantly crash dieting during her career.

"I'm on medication now but I'm doing perfectly fine thanks to a brilliant American doctor who diagnosed it early," she says and also recommends "the intelligent woman's exercise" of pilates.

These days Ekland travels on tour in her "big car" with pet chihuahua Tequila and is kitted out to survive life on the road until October.

"You have one day off each week, that's Sunday, so you have to make you life comfortable. You've got your kettle, thousands of bottles of water and your dog bed and go where-ever you need to," says Ekland who jokingly refers to Tequila as her fourth child - "although he's the only one I've ever trained to pee on command".

The two even did pantomime at Guildford last Christmas together with Ekland as the Genie in Aladdin.

And of the future? "Listen, I'm lucky to be alive and lucky to be doing this play."

* Just Desserts! plays Darlington Civic Theatre next week, Tuesday-Saturday. Box Office: (01325) 486 555.

Published: ??/??/2004