Actor queen laid in bed (7)
I believe the answer is:
corbett
'actor' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are singular nouns.
Perhaps there's an association between them I don't understand?
'queen laid in bed' is the wordplay.
'queen' becomes 'r' (abbreviation for regina, e.g. in ER ).
'laid' becomes 'bet' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'bed' becomes 'cot' (cot is a type of bed).
'r'+'bet'='rbet'
'rbet' placed inside 'cot' is 'CORBETT'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for corbett that I've seen is " Gentleman Jim".)