My grandmother spoiled my father rotten, and he grew up expecting women to do whatever he wanted. When he married my beautiful mother, Elsa, he expected her to give up her career as a champion ballroom dancer and become a good wife and mother, which she dutifully did.

Dynasty was the opportunity to take charge of my career rather than waiting around like a library book waiting to be loaned out.

My mother was a domestic goddess and Mother Earth figure. She was sweet and placid - just what the perfect wife was supposed to be and I was determined not to be.

I received an OBE from the Queen, which probably doesn't mean anything in America but is quite nice in England - the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.

Audiences like me in soft, romantic roles, and 'Premam' ticks all the boxes.

It doesn't matter which genre you're working in, you try to find an honest relationship within that space, and say if it's the romance genre, within that you have to find a story and characters that resonate with an audience.

The truth was, there were four partners in our marriage. Stephen and me, motor neurone disease, and physics. If you took out motor neurone disease, you are still left with physics.

It only took one text message to change my life. That's when I discovered my loving husband had been unfaithful. His infidelities ended our marriage.