A star 35 years in the making

Noel Coward, you feel, would have been able to pen an amusing little playlet about the recent fortunes of Tilly Tremayne, an actress for whom that overworked phrase "overnight star'' might have been invented. One day, this blonde fiftysomething was doing solid but largely unnoticed work at such worthy Fringe venues as the Orange Tree and the Gate; the next, she was the toast of the West End.

If you don't believe me, take a look at the billboards outside the production of Coward's Fallen Angels at the Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, where Tremayne is matching - if not outshining - her more famous colleagues, Felicity Kendal and Frances de la Tour, with a deft comic turn as Kendal's know-all maid, Saunders. Underneath a huge photograph of the actress on one billboard, The Spectator proclaims that: "Tilly Tremayne gives the best supporting performance in town." The other critics have scarcely been less adulatory. The Guardian raved that: "Good as they are, the stars are overshadowed by Tilly Tremayne.''

Her performance has even received the royal seal of approval. Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles saw the show one night and went backstage afterwards to congratulate the cast. Tremayne recalls: "I said to Prince Charles, 'Saunders is applying for a post at Highgrove.' There was a long pause before he replied, 'Oh, goody.''' All this attention is not bad for an actress who, in her own words, "had previously spent a lifetime doing new plays with lots of effing and blinding and rolling around on the floor, but not many people in the audience''. By her own admission, Tremayne is just not used to eye-catching leading roles. "I could never play crumpet because of my teeth,'' she laughs self-deprecatingly. "Anyway, it's too terrifying. You have to be glam all the time, and come out of the stage door looking simply divine.'' But now at last, she is on the receiving end of the sort of praise usually lavished on her husband, Trevor Peacock, who plays the much-loved Jim Trott in the BBC1 sitcom The Vicar of Dibley.

Tremayne has helped Fallen Angels become one of the hottest tickets in town. Touts outside the theatre have been seen fighting with each other like Florida lawyers. The auditorium is packed every night with more fur coats than the Rive Gauche. Last Thursday night, my view of the stage was partially blocked by the magnificent coiffure of Joan Collins, no less.

Tremayne remains touchingly bedazzled by the spotlight she has been thrust into. When she welcomes me into her Richmond flat for her first major newspaper article, the phone rings repeatedly as friends call to wish her luck with the interview. "All this does blow me away,'' marvels the actress, who lives round the corner from Jerry Hall, the star of The Graduate. (Tremayne jokes that a megastar of Hall's magnitude must travel to the West End by helicopter and that one day she might try to hitch a ride with her.) " It's shocking because I've been in the business for 35 years, and, in the past, reviews have always been inconsequential to me. It's just incredible that all the private teamwork which we developed for Fallen Angels in a run-down church hall in Paddington should be launched into the public arena so splendiferously. "Suddenly to be in the arc light like this is amazing.'' She modestly ascribes the success of her performance to the character. "Coward was a clever old sod,'' Tremayne says. "He realised that the British are all enamoured of that sort of domineering woman. There are some huge female role models in our culture. It all started with Boudicca. Why was Mrs Thatcher so popular? Because she behaved like everyone's nanny. Britain breeds those women, they're the backbone of the nation. We were the first European country that had nannies, and they drew on Queen Victoria's example - 'I'm in charge. Don't fret.' Saunders is just like that.''

Tremayne is quick to stress that all this acclaim has not given her inflated ideas. "We're very unlike America where actors seek stardom immediately,'' reckons the actress, who is done up in a fetching black V-neck jumper and beige trousers. "Here, we're brought up to do a job for the sake of it. Felicity, Frankie and I aren't very starry. We still sit there bemoaning the fact that our dishwashers are broken.''

The actress has been signed up for a six-month stint in Fallen Angels, but she is not holding her breath after that. "I'm old and wise enough to know that anything - or possibly nothing - could happen. This success won't go to my head - good Lord, no. I just hope that in my later years, I'm going to have a rich seam of Miss Marple-type English eccentrics to mine. Margaret Rutherford and Angela Lansbury had very good careers as they got older. It's one of the pluses of being a character actress. I feel my best years are ahead of me. "I've got a 92-year-old actress friend who tells me, 'Darling, if you can hold on till you're 85, then there are so few other actors around that you get loads of work. If you can still walk and hold a script, the field is yours.''' The succes fou of Fallen Angels has certainly catapulted Tremayne into the limelight. However, as I make to leave, she underlines that she still has some way to go before she can truly join the celeb A-list. "Did Joan Collins come and see me after the show?'' she asks with a knowing smile. "Did she hell."