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Thrill seeker: Greta Scacchi rides "a rollercoaster" of emotions in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea

"I feel I'm walking around the stage naked," said Dame Peggy Ashcroft of playing the lead in Terence Rattigan's masterpiece, The Deep Blue Sea.

The story of Hester Collyer, a woman who leaves her respectable High Court Judge husband for a passionate love affair with a semi-alcoholic RAF pilot, Rattigan's play premiered in 1952 when such behaviour was verboten.

Half a century later, the same emotionally revealing role is being taken on by Greta Scacchi, an actress better known for literally stripping off in various sultry screen roles.

Edward Hall directs the revival, which arrives in Richmond hot on the heels of Rattigan's French Without Tears. But The Deep Blue Sea is quite a different proposition to his semi-farcical debut, opening as it does with Hester's attempted suicide.

"It's certainly the biggest role I've ever had," admits Scacchi, nursing her first tea of the day in her dressing room at the Cheltenham Everyman. And this from a woman who famously turned down the lead in Basic Instinct.

"But it's so well written that you can follow the character on her emotional journey just through the writing. The struggle that Hester is going through hangs on the embarrassment and isolation her divorce and affair have caused. And it doesn't matter which decade we are living in, we understand that desperation. We understand what it's like to discover an overwhelming sexual passion for someone and not deny it."

At least, Scacchi does. Blame her Italian blood, but the Milan-born actress has always lived her love-life at the highest pitch, from an early fling with Daniel Day Lewis at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School to her passionate four year affair with American actor Vincent D'Onofrio.

D'Onofrio left Gracchi in 1993 soon after their daughter Leila was born and Scacchi is now married to her first cousin, Carlo Mantegazza, with whom she has a son, Matteo, 10. So she is no stranger to either heartache or public disapproval.

Sitting pretty: Life is treating Scacchi well, both professionally and emotionally.

"This role has an uncanny amount in common with my own emotional..." - she pauses - "well, it has lot of material that feels fairly timeless.

"It takes a few years to accumulate that amount of experience to draw on - pain, exasperation, frustration, anger and despair. But after all that, you can be glad that you went through such overwhelming masochistic passion for another human being who was not worthy and not able to return that feeling. Intead of it being a disadvantage, it becomes an asset. It's even rather life-assuring."

Scacchi, 48, does not share Ashcroft's hatred for the role of Hester: "I know it's exhausting but the wonderful thing is that the material itself drives you through. I don't want to emote but I get these charges of energy: physical thrills where tears are triggered, shivers down my spine or moments of feeling like collapsing. It's quite an amazing feeling, like being taken on a rollercoaster ride."

Does Scacchi's new-found stability afford her some perspective on the ups and downs of her own life? Not only is she happy at home in Sussex, but after a fallow period in Hollywood, she will star next to Emma Thompson in the forthcoming remake of Brideshead Revisited.

"I'd like to think there's some lovely plateau you reach," she says. "But it's very hard to let go of all those hopes and expectations we have for ourselves. Maybe some people manage it but I'm not one of them. We still read Cinderella and believe it can happen to us."

The Deep Blue Sea, Richmond Theatre, The Green, Richmond, Monday, March 10 to Saturday, March 15, £14-£28, call 0870, visit richmondtheatre.net.

10:15am Monday 3rd March 2008

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