Sue Ellen looks the part

Eleven years of hard drinking as lip-quivering Sue Ellen in TV?s Dallas don?t seem to have affected Linda Gray?s looks, if rehearsals for The Graduate are anything to go by.

This picture of the 60-year-old actress, best known for being the wife of oil tycoon JR Ewing in the Eighties soap, was taken during rehearsals for her opening night on the West End stage next week.

When she debuts on Monday, Ms Gray will follow the likes of Kathleen Turner, Jerry Hall, Amanda Donohoe and Anne Archer, stripping off on stage at the Gielgud Theatre as the boozy seductress Mrs Robinson. Of her casting, The Graduate?s producer Sacha Brooks, 35, has said: ?I am absolutely chuffed about Linda playing the role.?

Mr Brooks said Ms Gray had been considered for the part of Mrs Robinson for some time.

Ms Gray herself, however, is not so enthusiastic about baring all. She said: ?I am scared to death of the nudity in the role. But that?s part of the job and it is something I am going to have to overcome. I?m thrilled to be acting in London?s West End.?

Ms Gray kicked off her relationship with The Graduate back in 1967. It was one of her stocking-clad legs that famously adorned posters for the hit film starring Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. Then Ms Gray was an unknown model.

Now she has walked away with the whole part, as the fifth and the oldest so far to take on the role in the stage adaptation. She will replace Anne Archer who has been in the role since April.

Ms Gray?s acting career since ending her 11-year reign as the drunken queen of Southfork in 1989 can hardly be described as glittering. Apart from several uninspiring television movies, a cameo appearance in Melrose Place and a few episodes of Lovejoy opposite Ian McShane, the mother-of-two has been otherwise mostly out of the spotlight.