'I'm always scared I'll be found out'

By Pam Francis

In the news

03 November 2011 11:01

She looks so poised and confident,it's hard to believe actress Joanna Lumley suffers the same worries and self-doubts as the rest of us...

Joanna Lumley jokes that she was born in a suitcase. After all, she has undertaken expeditions to more corners of the earth than most of us could ever dream of.She’s explored the frozen wastes of the Arctic circle in search of the Northern Lights, trekked through the Sahara desert on her way to the source of the Nile and most recently taken us on a journey round Greece.

But nothing gives her more joy than exploring the countryside with her two very special intrepid adventurers… her small granddaughters Alice, eight and Emily, seven.

“I am happiest in the world when I am off in the hills of Scotland with the two girls.
“We talk about anything in the world, we make things up. We rush around playing games, making up fairy tales, and inventing things.
“We are knights, or live in make-believe towns, or think where shall we hide for the night?  We can say and do anything we want. And there is no one to monitor  us,” says Joanna who has recently returned from a trip with her grand-daughters to the remote Scottish cottage which has been her refuge from the limelight for many years.

Even when she is at her house in South London she loves nothing more than babysitting for her son Jamie and wife Tessa who live nearby.
“I am so lucky they live in London so that I can see them, and read them stories and help them with their prep.
“Alice when she was very small tried to call me GrannyJo, but she could only come out with ‘daddydoh’ which is what they still call me!

“Being a grandmother is a hugely important role in my life. It’s being part of the family, that’s the truth of it. I don’t have a career. I just work when work comes long. It’s real life that’s important. I am an ordinary wife, mother and grandmother whose job is being an actress,” she tells me over tea.

Over the years Joanna has collected thousands of photographs of her life. As an army child born growing up in the tropical heat of Malaya, her Swinging Sixties modelling – and finally her breakthrough as a stage actress in Brian Rix farces, into films as a Bond girl and finally TV with her New Avengers role as Purdey, and Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. Not forgetting of course her good works as a human rights activist – winning her Ghurka rights campaign --  which has turned her into a national treasure.

“I’ve always been a hoarder, squirreling things away like, letters, mementoes, even clothes from the Sixties. My mother was the same and kept cuttings and programmes from everything I did.
“I have kept a lifetime in photos at my house in suitcases, paper bags, folders, thinking they’d be useful one day.”

And now they have. Joanna has sorted through them to compile an illustrated memoir called Absolutely, with many of the chapters devoted to her breakthrough into acting after three years as a model.

“What was so hard was trying to be accepted as an actress which I knew I was in my heart. But always being cast as someone who just had one line and was very pretty in clothes.
“Even when I got into acting there was always this feeling of being an outsider.

“We’ve all got this thing that we’ll be found out. And someone will say ‘you, at the back, you’re not an actor, get out.’ If you’re not in work, you begin to doubt yourself. Why am I not in work. Is it because I’m bad. Are they trying to tell me something? It never goes.”
Three Bafta awards on, and she is still in huge demand, both as an actress and documentary maker.
But it’s in one of her best-known roles, as the outrageous Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous, that she makes a return to comedy later this year.

Joanna recently started filming three new episodes of the sit-com to mark the 20th anniversary of the series which first aired on the BBC in 1992.
It’s a role that Joanna was born to play. Even as a teenager she had some Patsy traits. “As soon as I was 17 I took my driving test and failed almost before I started for a) wearing a vast black hat that blocked my all round vision, and b) because I drove over a pavement. I continued to drive on L plates for two years (often on my own: I was never stopped or reprimanded. We had a very louche regard for laws) and passed the test at my second attempt,” says Joanna.

She admits it is wonderful reprising her Patsy role. “It’s so lovely to play her again.  She has taken up such an enormous part of my life. I know her inside out.  As soon as I put on her make-up, I become her… She is a completely different thing from any other character I’ve ever played,”

With two episodes reported to be going out around Christmas, there will be a third for the Olympics which is being filmed at the stadium.
“I’m not sure what Edina or Patsy will be doing there! I’ve yet to find out!” laughs Joanna.

Who knows, it may even involve the mad duo running the 100 metres. But whatever the plan, one thing is certain, at 65, Joanna has no intention of slowing down.
“Why would I ever stop my blissful life of taking on new parts, and having new adventures. It’s what I do.

“Sorting through all these pictures has made me think, how could I have crammed all these experiences  into my life. I can remember most of it, even childhood things, and the emotions, as if it was yesterday. And yet it goes so quickly.
“I’m 65 now, but I don’t really do birthdays. Maybe it’s because my birthdays were always at school when I was a boarder.

“To me age doesn’t matter.  When I was 12 I wanted to be 18. When I was 18 I wanted to be 30, when I was 30 I wanted to be 45. I love getting older.  And my husband loves me just as I am.”

She married conductor Stephen Barlow when she was 40, and the couple celebrated their Silver Wedding Anniversary recently.
“You’ve got to work at marriages – tend them, water the pots when there is no rain, take back the weeks and not take your husband or wife for granted,” says Joanna, “I think indifference is the greatest crime in our world.” 

Absolutely by Joanna Lumley is published in hardback by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, price £20.