A TRIUMPHANT BIRD MISSES HER NEST

“I’m tired,” said Lauren Bacall. “I need to spend some time in my own home. It’s no fun being here alone.”

Since early summer the husky-voiced star has been here in the West End, starring triumphantly in Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth.” With the departure last week of her co-star, American actor Michael Beck, whose contract was up, she has been busily rehearsing with a new actor, hence her weariness.

Bacall will stay with the play until the end of November, spend Christmas at her home in New York, then fly to Australia where she’ll star in the show with an all-Australian supporting cast.

“That’s for 10 weeks,” she said, reclining on a sofa in her rented apartment. “Then I’ll take some time off before beginning a six-month American tour. We’ll play Los Angeles, of course, and eventually finish up in New York.”

Tired she may be, but coming here has been a stimulating experience for her. The reviews have been splendid, and she has been extensively interviewed. “The best was on TV,” she said. “Unfortunately, I looked like hell.” Fellow actors and friends have besieged her dressing room each night.

“It’s the first time I’ve been in a play by a great playwright,” she said. “Remember, I’ve spent the past 15 years doing musicals. A play like this gives you such support as an actress.

“Some people dismiss this as one of Williams’ lesser plays, but I disagree. So does Jessica Tandy, who came to see it the other night--she thought it wonderful. And, after all, Harold Pinter (who directed) doesn’t just direct anything.

“So, all in all, it’s been very encouraging. It’s nice when people tell you you’re in a great production. The trouble is, of course, I’ll never get the chance to see it.”

NEW HONOR: This week Peter Ustinov was made a commandeur des arts et des lettres by the French government for his contribution to the arts.

The medal was given to him at a celebrity-studded dinner hosted by the French ambassador in London. Among those attending was Jean Stapleton, who co-stars with Ustinov in “Dead Man’s Folly,” a CBS-TV movie now being filmed here. This marks his fourth portrayal of Hercule Poirot in an Agatha Christie adventure.

Later this year he flies to Canada to help edit down to six hours the 75 hours of footage he filmed in the Soviet Union this year for Canadian TV.

The show, “My Russia,” takes him from Lithuania to Siberia and includes “interviews” with such historical characters as Tolstoy, Lenin and Catherine the Great, all played by Soviet actors in costume.

“The only one the Russians were concerned about was Lenin,” he said. “But I show him at 25 when he was just a student.”

Ustinov, who speaks Russian fluently, is probably the only star in the West to have his own ruble account in a Soviet bank, from royalties earned there by his plays.

“I haven’t checked on it recently,” he said. “All I know is it’s earning me only 3%.”

BAD START: In Sir Alec Guinness’ memoirs, “Blessings in Disguise,” just published here, he is remarkably frank about his life, revealing that he was born illegitimate and had little success as an actor when he started out.

At his first audition for the Old Vic, he says, the director shouted at him: “You’re no actor. Get off the . . . stage.” When rehearsing one of his first major roles with actress Ruth Gordon, he heard her call to director Tyrone Guthrie, “I can’t act with this young man. Please get me another.”

MEETING MERYL: Will Meryl Streep ever consent to be interviewed by the London Sunday Times again? After talking with her, Sunday Times reporter Henry Porter wrote: “Streep in the flesh is utterly different from Streep on celluloid. The latter is more real. Like Laurence Olivier, or perhaps Peter Sellers, she is substantial when she fills a role but somehow dematerializes without one. . . . I left (her) with the vague feeling of having seen a ghost. . . . “

QUOTE--From model-actress Jerry Hall, here plugging her book, “Jerry Hall’s Tall Tales,” and discussing her eight-year liaison with Mick Jagger, by whom she has two children:

“He says he wants to marry me, but every time we talk about setting a date he gets this sick look on his face.”