Stephanie Beacham felt an ‘absolute wimp’ when she gave armed robber her money

Dynasty’s Stephanie Beacham said she felt like an “absolute wimp” when she gave an armed robber her money after he broke into her home.

The Coronation Street actress said she thought she was “going to die” during the raid on her home in West London on Oct 25 2022.

Beacham, 76, was ordered to hand over her money and jewellery to burglar David Wilson after confronting him.

Wilson, from Glasgow, who threatened the British actress with a two-foot metal bar, was jailed for a total of 10 years and five months in February last year.

He pleaded guilty to the aggravated burglary in London and to a separate burglary in Sheffield.

Beacham recalled the raid on ITV’s Good Morning Britain (GMB) on Tuesday, saying: “I heard a noise downstairs and I thought ‘oh well there’s no one I know, must be I’ve got an assistant (or) a friend’, and I said ‘hello’, and I looked over in the back and there he was. The most frightening face with a ... crowbar.

“He did have the opportunity to run for the front door, but he didn’t, he leapt up the stairs.

“He leapt up the stairs and then there it was, a crowbar, over my head, and then the corny dialogue, ‘give me your money, give me your jewellery, don’t look at me, I wish you weren’t here’.

“I thought ‘oh, I think I’m going to die’ and I was an absolute wimp, total wimp, and I gave him my money.

“So, then he said ‘what’s in that handbag’, a lovely Valentino handbag. I was sitting there. I said ‘nothing, look’. I gave him everything”, Beacham said.

The robber then told her to go into the bathroom, which she did.

“I thought, ‘you’ve been such a wimp, you’ve been such a wimp and you haven’t got your phone because you dropped it when you saw him and now he’s got your phone and the other phone is the other side of the bed, (in) the other room’.”

She also thought of what Jodie Foster – as the mother, Meg Altman, in 2002 thriller Panic Room – would do in the situation and picked up a “wobbly sponge” on a plastic handle, and held it by the door.

Beacham added: “Anyway, after a length of time I heard noises and it seemed like he’d gone downstairs, and I got out and I phoned the police.

“Weeks later when I was giving in the report thing, I said ‘I feel almost sorry for him’, and the policeman was incredibly cross with me. He said ‘I heard your 999 call, you thought you were going to die’.”

In February 2023, Southwark Crown Court judge Martin Griffiths told Wilson: “What you did had a traumatic effect on her.

“You violated the safe space of her home causing her to be suspicious of non-existent threats and even the difficulty of learning her lines when she goes for an acting job.”

Beacham had her big break in the 1971 horror film The Nightcomers with Marlon Brando and she is best known for playing Sable Colby in Dynasty.