come and it’s going to be such fun”. I
was actually visiting my cousins who had
TB, and they were in the London Chest
Hospital. It all seems really Dickensian
but we’re only talking 50-odd years ago.
That’s what London was like.
I was always a dreamer and a dawdler.
I was always told that I was a dawdler
because I used to set out for school,
at eight o’clock or whatever it was and
sometimes I wouldn’t end up there until
about ten. And the teachers would say,
“Well, where have you been?” There’d be
uproar and I was always in trouble and I’d
say, “I was coming to school.” I’d have all
these fantasies and dreams on the way
and I’d do plays to myself and be Doris
Day leaping on walls doing Whip Crack
Away. I lived in my own kind of fantasy
world and actually my fantasy world was
much better than my reality.
10
I guess that’s why I became an actress
and writer because I always wanted to
stay in it.
I was dyslexic and at that time nobody
really knew what that was. So although
I’m incredibly creative, I could never spell
and I put things back to front - and of
course at that time they thought you were
just thick. Instead of you getting more
attention the teacher would put you at
the back of the class with all the smelly
kids. You were just like a no hoper. But
actually, it was dyslexia.
I loved stories and I loved things like
history as well - I never got science but
anything creative I loved. It’s just that I
couldn’t spell and there was a different
set of criteria then. It was reading, writing
and arithmetic and that’s what you were
judged on. It wasn’t on your creativity. I
failed my eleven plus. I just remember
looking out the window and imagining all
sorts of things.
When did you realise that you wanted
to become an actress?
I realised I wanted to become an actress
when I was six years old. That was it,
and a lot of the time my mum was quite
unhappy and I used to do things to
make her laugh and cheer her up. But,
as I said, because of this fantasy world
that I lived in I’d do things like get in the
bath but I wouldn’t just be in the bath.
For example, there was a programme
called Sea Hunt so I’d have a flannel in
my mouth and I’d strap sponges to my
back and I’d be swimming. They always
used to dive off the back of the boat and
I did that once and knocked myself out. I
realised, when I did these things, it would
make my mum laugh and make her
happy, so acting is what I wanted to do.
When I was eleven I took myself off to