SARA Crowe has been watching a lot of television recently, especially from across the Atlantic.

This isn't because she has become a couch potato - far from it. She has been doing research into her characters for London Suite which opens at the Theatre Royal, Windsor, next week.

"All my characters are American. I haven't done an American accent before, but there's so much on TV I can pick it up. The hard thing is to differentiate between a New York accent and a Los Angeles one."

Sara joins John Challis, Sue Holderness and Mark Curry in Neil Simon's London Suite. It is the first time this play, which has four one-act plays, has been staged in England.

The story is about the guests who stay in a hotel room. The hotel is based on The Connaught in London.

Sara plays three characters - a match-making daughter, an efficient secretary and a haughty American from Los Angeles.

"This is the most contemporary play I have done for quite a while, normally I stop at about 1940. She last played at the Theatre Royal in The Constant Wife.

Sara's bolt to stardom happened in quite an unconventional way. She became famous because of the television advertisement for Philadelphia cheese.

"I was doing cabaret with Ann Bryson, who was the dark haired one in the Phili commercial. We were actually finding it hard to find work because we were doing cabaret. And we went up for an audition for the commercial together."

Although fame came from a commercial, her first love is the theatre.

"The theatre has always been the one consistent thing in my career, and I have always done theatre before the commercial and after it.

"The commercial made a huge difference to the type of parts I was offered. It is a curious thing, I worked for a week doing that commercial and was paid as much as I do in the theatre for a year."

Sara's step into acting happened because she was naughty at school.

"I was having difficulties at school, just the usual adolescent discipline problems, like smoking on the sports pitch.

I went to a very strict school in Guildford where running in the corridor was a capital offence. My mum thought that drama classes would help me express myself and I just carried on doing it."

She went on to star in Four Wedding and a Funeral, Caught in the Act and Carry on Columbus, as well as having her own TV sitcom with Ann, which was a spin off from the Phili advertisement.

A few years ago she was caught up in a wave of publicity when her first marriage ended. She now shares her Guildford home with her husband Sean Carson, a film script writer.

London Suite is at Theatre Royal, Windsor April 27 to May 8. Tickets: 01753 853888