Actress Britt Ekland tells STEVE PRATT why she's emjoying the life of a gipsy

AS "a woman of a certain age", Britt Ekland realises her chances of big screen opportunities are limited. "Unless you're Maggie Smith or someone like that, there's not a lot of film work for someone my age," explains the Bond girl, former wife of Peter Sellers and sometime companion of Rod Stewart.

So the Swedish actress, who reaches 60 in October, is more than happy to be back on the British stage in Robert King's romantic thriller The Dragon Variation, which comes to Billingham and York this month.

"I'm very comfortable on stage now," she says. "British audiences are wonderful. They're the best. They've been very faithful when I've done something."

Even the touring doesn't bother her, which perhaps isn't so unexpected in someone who moves between Los Angeles, London and her native Stockholm. She has no preferences. "That's the terrible thing - I have no roots. I feel comfortable in any of those places. Because I have lived in so many countries over the years, that's what's happened to me," she says.

Rather than enjoying the jet set lifestyle, Ekland likes nothing more than piling her belongings into her car and driving around the country from venue to venue.

"You live in your car basically," she says. "I have my pillow, duvet, a few clothes, make-up case and kettle. I usually travel with a microwave as well. You live like a gipsy, going from town to town. I don't mind that part because I love driving. I find it very relaxing to drive. I also like the camaraderie when you're touring. You go in early before a show for chats and go to the bar afterwards. That part is so lovely. You have a good social life."

Her previous stage work over here has been confined to pantomime and farce. The Dragon Variation offers her a rare dramatic role as a widow whose comfortable life is upset by a nephew trying to persuade her to write a book about her late sleazy MP husband. She calls it part love story, part mystery.

"I've never been offered a straight part, apart from Daphne Du Maurier's September Tide which I did in Australia last year. She was an older woman living on her own," she says. "The challenge is to play a straight part convincingly. You have none of those things you can use in comedy. It's very exciting.

"I had bad stage fright for many years and that's why I started doing pantomime to try to get over it. In that and the farces I've done, you're part of a big cast. There are only three of us in The Dragon Variation so you are quite naked on stage, so to speak. It makes you feel very special."

Ekland works little in films these days but two of her past successes return to haunt her, Get Carter and The Wicker Men. Both have achieved cult status among movie buffs. Not that she was in a position to agree or disagree as "I never, ever watch my movies".

She made an exception last year and saw the Newcastle-set gangster thriller Get Carter in which she co-starred with Michael Caine. "I think it's a bloody good film and stood up incredibly well," she says. Not that she filmed in the North-East - all her scenes were shot in a studio in London.

She's less happy with The Wicker Man, the horror movie that was cut by the distributors and released as the lower half of a double bill nearly 30 years ago. A director's cut, containing newly-discovered material, was shown on Channel 4 earlier this year and has been released on DVD. "It was not a happy experience," she says of making the film, which also stars Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee.

Reluctantly, she agreed to talk about it for a recent TV documentary. "They'd been trying to get me to do it for the last four years, and I said I couldn't because I had only bad things to say. Then afterwards I found out that everyone else felt the same."

*l The Dragon Variation runs at Billingham Forum from April 15-20 (tickets 01642 551389) and the Grand Opera House, York, from April 22-27. (tickets 01904 671818).