TREVOR EVE: From a life on Shoesting to High Society!

He has been all the way to Hollywood and back since his early days of fame in the detective series Shoestring. Ian Woodward caught up with the much-in-demand actor at rehearsals for the new stage musical, High Society.

The stage is dimly lit, the theatre empty. But the solitary figure of actor Trevor Eve, emerging dramatically from the shadows, ammounts to something quite extraordinary. He is casually dressed in beige cords and a purple sweat-shirt. His toysled hair, blond streaked after two years making movies and a TV series in the scorching Californian sun, assumes a life of its own. He is tap-dancing like a born hoofer, light years away from his former image as the laidback West Country detective of the Shoestring television series.

Trevor Eve, the actor who communicated by sign language in his award winning stage performance as the speech therapist in love with his deaf pupil in Children of a Lesser-God, is now the versatile all-rounder who taps his way to romance in the new stage musical High Society. The show is a musical version of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story, which starred Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart and Ruth Hussey in the 1940 Hollywood movie. Sixteen years later it inspired MGM musical, High Society, with songs by Cole Porter, and starred Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm. But the new stage show, after a ten-week season at Leicester's Haymarket Theatre, opens in London's West End next month, based squarely on the original play but with the musical score from the MGM film. Trevor stars in the role immortalised by Grant and Crosby, with Vanessa Redgrave's daughter Natasha Richardson, in the Hepburn/Kelly role. And for Trevor, last seen on television as the horse-thieving gypsy Jem Merlin in the HTV serialisation of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn, it represents a dream come true. "I've always loved those old movies with song-and-dance men like Jack Buchanan, Fred Astaire and Dan Dailey - great stuff," Trevor enthuses. "All my life, I've wanted to learn to tap but never got round to doing it. And in this show I act and sing and dance; but, above all, I have to be able to tap with more than average ability … which is why you caught me going at it, ten to the dozen! "I'm improving," he says thoughtfully, "I'm getting the hang of it. With hard work, and under the briljant instruction of our choreographer, David Toguri, I'm actually getting there. He twiddles his toes and smiles: "I'm never going to be Fred Astaire, but I can put the steps together. We do a two-hour work-out every morning and it's amazing how the body reacts." Trevor also gets to sing some of Cole Porter's most memorable songs in the show. (He took singing lessons in California before returning to this country.) Audiences have been rising to their feet in delight after hearing his rendition of Well, Did You Evah?, I Love You Samantha, That's Jazz, True Love and the title-song High Society. "I'm having the time of my life," beams Trevor, who is married to beautiful actress Sharon Maughan. The couple have two children, Alice, five next month, and sixteen month old Jack. "I've always wanted to do a musical, and I was hooked by this one. The character I play, wealthy Philadelphian C.K. Dexter, has quick wit and manipulative charm, and I've never been asked to play someone like that before. So it's fun to do. I just hope audiences are as surprised by what I'm doing as I am!"

TV and film audiences have other surprises in store. Just before starting rehearsals for High Society, Trevor returned to the UK to shoot Granada's yet-to-be-seen film A Wrath Of Roses, in which he plays a mysterious stranger who arrives in a sleepy English country village in the oppressively hot summer of 1947 and becomes involved in the lives of the inhabitants. Already shown here was the first fruit of his two years in Hollywood. The coveted roles of the De Franchi twins, the intellectual Louis and the swashbuckling Lucien, in the Corsican Brothers, gave him a welcome opportunity to combine brains with brawn. It marked his American film debut and was followed by the contrasting part of anthropology professor-turned-detective, Jonathan McKenzie, in the contemporary comedy drama series Shadow Chasers - a spin-off from the two hour TV movie of the same name which Trevor made for Warner Bros. In Los Angeles. In his two years there he has moved from rented accomodation in Santa Monica to buying his own house in Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills, complete with pool - "every house has a pool in that part of Los Angeles; having a pool is like having a hose-pipe elsewhere. It's so hot that you need somewhere to dip into. Some days it gets to 110 or 120 degrees F. It's cool at night, because it's desert basically. "But it's lovely living there. You go to the beach with the family at the weekend - to Malibu, say, or Santa Monica State Beach. "People work very, very hard, so have to unwind at the weekend. On the series Shadow Chasers, I worked much longer hours than I've ever worked before. I'd arrive at the studio for make-up at 6 am and I would be there till 9 pm and sometimes 11 pm. "I'm not complaining though. I bought myself a jeep and drove to the studios each morning like a true Californian boy! "Living and working there has been terrific. Sharon, my wife, was pregnant during our early months, which was exciting. This was just at a time when I was able to buy her a comfortable house, so that I could then say 'Relax!' "In many way," he adds, "Sharon is more in demand in America than I am, because of TV's Masterpiece Theatre slot. We arrived there just as her two lengthy television series By the Sword Divided and The Flame Trees of Thika were being screened. "Suddenly she was appearing on everybody's chat shows and became quite a celebrity. She was offered film and theatre work which, although she didn't really want to do it at the time, she accepted. But after the first couple of offers, she turned down work so that she could stay home with Jack. Now she's in the market for work again." The Eves are a contemporary, successful acting team, a truly transatlantic family. Their daughter, Alice, is quite at ease in the duality of their lives, attending schools in both London and Los Angeles. "She loves the life-style," says her proud father. "She even has two accents. She knows full well that when she goes to an American school she goes to a 'bathroom', and that when she's in an English school he goes to a 'toilet'.

Today, Trevor sees his "Hollywood phase" and his "stage musical phase" as a natural progression from his earlier fame as Eddie Shoestring. Even so, everything that had gone before in his acting career - repertory theatre in Liverpool, leading roles in two West End triumphs, some television and the role of Jonathan Harker in the film Dracula - had been but an overture to the television series that made him a household name. Shoestring, proclaimed the "sexiest man on the telly", wore worn-out pyjamas instead of shirts, drove a second-hand Ford Cortina Estate, and couldn't afford a place of his own. Almost overnight Trevor was transformed from a talented, but relatively unknown actor into a television heart-throb and recipient of such accolades as "the most promising young actor in British show business" from the variety Club of Great Britain. Laurence Olivier chose Trevor to appear in his Best Plays series on ITV, and directed hum too, and it was in this that Shoestring producer Robert Banks Stewart first spotted him. The actor is tall, and possibly even better looking today than he was when we first met five years ago, with a sharp hawk-like profile, direct brown eyes and the muscular build of an athlete; he keeps fit with regular exercise sessions in the gym, and he plays a great deal of tennis and horse-riding. He possesses a staggering memory. Although so much time had elapsed since we last met, he still remembered that our conversation was not conducted under the easiest of conditions - "Remember the noise of the washing-machine, the cleaning lady vacuuming and the builder knocking the wall down?" he asked. I do, I do!

"I find it hard to come to terms with interviews," he says. "I've become a fairly private person, although I wasn't like that. "At school I was rather annoying, full of nervous energy. A mischievous boy. I was cricket-mad. I hated everything to do with acting." He also hated everything to do with public-school life, he says. The younger son of a Staffordshire businessman, he was sent to Bromsgrove School in Worcestershire, where former pupils had included actor Ian Carmichael and the late Richard Wattis. This far-from-happy period in his life was redeemed only by his love of sport, particularly cricket. But in the end, because he was good at art and sculpture, he came to London to study architecture - and then turned his attention to acting. "Suddenly," he recalls, "there was something incredibly romantic in being 'an actor'. My ambition was to have in my passport 'Occupation: Actor'. To be an actor seemed rather wonderful. It still does."

A week after leaving his London drama college he found himself in his first job at Liverpool's prestigious Everyman's Theatre, where he was cast as singer-songwriter Paul McCartney in John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert. The play subsequently transferred to London and brought Trevor much publicity, of which he still remains sceptical. "For a lot of people in the business I was nothing more than a Paul McCartney look-alike, and they thought I was from Liverpool, so I was already pigeon-holed. But pigeons can be messengers of good tidings. One day he was playing tennis at his local club when a friend called out that theatre and film director Franco Zeffirelli wanted Trevor: on the phone. The result was that he was cast to play Joan Plowright's illegitimate son, Riccardo, in the Italian director's production of Filumena. It turned out to be a watershed in Trevor's life: in the cast was his future wife. "I thought she was stunning, and I still do," he reflects. "We were all sitting around waiting for Franco. Sharon walked in, and I thought she was incredibly beautiful." He proffers a shy, uneasy smile. "I thought she wouldn't be interested in me, that she'd be going out with some handsome, rich gentleman. But I liked her a lot. We became friendly. I was mesmerised by her laugh. Then she's from Liverpool, and I'm very fond of Liverpool: I like the people, I like their sense of humour. And it was her sense of humour that made me suggest a drink with her after work. "Sharon's been an enormous help to me; I respect her judgement in just about everything. The way I work, and the pressure that I get - she understands.

"When I get involved in a part, I get involved. I get very tense. My temper is somewhat mercurial. I have a short fuse. But once I've cleared the air, it's all over. I can't stand dishonesty, and bottling up your feelings is one of the worst forms. You're not being true to yourself."After a four-year courtship, Trevor and Sharon married in 1980 and, later that year, had a holiday in St. Lucia in the West Indies, where Trevor's fame as Eddie Shoestring gave them an unexpected bonus. "We'd checked into an hotel," he says, "when one of the owners recognised me and promptly moved us to a wonderful beach cottage. At times it's nice to be recognised! "Let me tell you, being recognised really changed my life. It's like having friends round on Sundays. Some Sundays you want to see your friends, sometimes you don't. Sometimes it's great being recognised, sometimes it's a bit embarrassing; I've never lost my shyness."

Trevor talks fondly of the pleasure he gets from being near the sea, the wonderful feeling of being at home when it's very windy and pouring with rain outside, the exhilaration of having "a good run" on a wind-surfer without falling off, the ecstasy of cricket, the countryside, and good music. "I adore lazy breakfasts with Sharon, though the children make these rather rare nowadays. I love the closeness of our relationship. "It may sound trite, but I've never felt so happy, so fulfilled, so at one with the world. Sharon and I nove have identities both in England and the United States; homes in Holland Park and Benedict Canyon, with lots of friends there and a lot of friends here. "The children have really completed the picture. I can't envisage having a big family, because of the sheer impracticality, but I'd quite like to have maybe one more child. "At nearly five, Alice is just beginning to undersand what I do. When we were filming A Wreath of Roses in Gloucestershire, there was a fair scene with carousels and they wanted lots of children in the background. So I encouraged Alice to take part. "In the film she as required to get on a carousel, then jump off and run to get a lolly. After the second take she said: 'But Daddy, I've done it twice and I'm bored.' "And my response was, 'Well, now you know what I have to go through!' It was a useful lesson. "She spoke to me on the phone the other day and said, 'Daddy, what do you have to be in the show this time?' I thought that was wonderful. She understood that I have to go out and be 'somebody else'. "She's seen me with so many different haircuts. One day I came back after shooting Shadow Chasers with blood and a scar on my face, which I'd forgotten to take off; and it came as a great shock to her. So then I had to explain about the make-up. "Alice takes after me in so many ways. For example, like me, she loves painting. In Los Angeles I've been painting a lot of canvasses. "I used to paint years ago but, from a practical point of view, where do you hang 10 ft by 6 ft canvasses in a London house? But I've now done six huge canvasses and they're all hanging in our house in Benedict Canyon. "I don't sign my paintings. Anyone can have a go with a paintbrush even when the works are up on the wall! I'm going to put some brushes and a choice of paints next to them, ready!" He laughs and says that, as a father, he's "easy, easy, easy". "I try hard to practise mutual respect, "he reasons, "as opposed to imposing strict discipline. But of course, then you have to be the enforcer sometimes; which I hate."

Our conversation is interrupted by the company manager saying Trevor is needed on stage. "Now?" he queries. "Now the show must go on … Laurence Olivier got it right. ‘'It's one thing to get there,' he told me, 'But trying to stay there, that's the tricky bit'."