IN her richly velvet, undulating purr of a voice, Joanna Lumley tells me what it’s like to go from kissing Leonardo DiCaprio on a film set to helping clean up the Essex coastline on a cold rainy day.
“It’s a wonderful contrast, isn’t it,” she chimes. “That’s what I love about my job, I get to do so many things and they are all so varied.”
Joanna has a knack for throwing herself into every project she is involved in, which is probably why the national treasure’s career has spanned four decades and is still going strong.
She headed to East Shoebury Beach to promote the M&S Beach Clean Up. The campaign, in conjunction with the Marine Conservation Society, will see about 110 beaches cleaned up of litter across the UK.
Joanna will only visit Essex for the campaign, so she made the most of the opportunity by getting her hands dirty and helping clean up.
She still had immaculate make-up and a chic scarf tied around her neck though, of course darling. Joanna, 66, became a household name as the character Purdy in the Avengers.
Since then, she has regularly appeared on stage and in TV roles, from the iconic Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous, to roles in Jam and Jerusalem, Sensitive Skin and as a Bond girl in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Her latest part is alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the upcoming Martin Scorsese crime drama, the Wolf of Wall Street.
She enthuses: “Leonardo was utterly non starry and so friendly and chatted to absolutely everyone. I have always admired him as an actor and he was so professional to work with.
“I also got to work with the legend that is Scorsese, which was very exciting! He was completely charming and wonderful.”
So what about the kiss with the handsome Leonardo, which reportedly took 27 takes to get right?
She says: “Unfortunately, with the kissing he took a while getting used to it. So I was like, ‘Try, try again’.” When Joanna talks about her part as Patricia, she is characteristically modest.
She says: “It is a very small part, but was a great experience. The film is based on a true story about a banker who enlists Aunt Patricia, my character, to take suitcases of money to Switzerland. It is a thrilling story and completely true.”
Back in Essex, Joanna was thrilled to see so many people turn out on the day to help clean the beach. She says: “It was raining on the way down and gloomy, but when we arrived there were absolutely masses of people out in their cagoules and schoolkids waiting to help out. “It was been wonderful. The beach is really lovely anyway and looks even nicer now!”
One thing about Joanna is she is not afraid to mince her words. She has spoken out as a human rights activist for Survival International and the Gurkha Justice Campaign. There was a backlash when Joanna said young women should moderate their behaviour and how they dress or risk being attacked or robbed. She has also sparked fierce debate by claiming the real reason obesity figures are soaring is people are too quick to eat bad foods like cupcakes.
She is especially tough on people when it comes to littering. Joanna says: “I think people who drop litter are absolutely squalid. “I spend a lot of time picking up wrappers and rubbish. I carry a bag in my bag so I can scoop things up and put them in the bin. It makes me more sad than angry that people litter the country.”
She is particularly concerned about the effect litter is having on the environment.
Joanna says: “We really need to get the point across that people need to throw their rubbish away. “During the summer months, when people are having picnics and going for a walk, they should keep in mind not to carelessly throw things on the ground.
“It might seem like nothing but it is about marine conservation. The sea is not a sewer or a rubbish dump. Fish might come and try to eat rubbish and affects everything.
“Things that we might not consider to be rubbish, like cotton buds, can be absolutely fatal to marine life.” What did they discover cleaning up the beach?
Joanna says: “The most shocking thing has been all the broken glass. “It is like David Attenborough said, the human race is a plague on the world’s resources.
“We spend so much money trying to cure diseases and in the end we could find we were the ones that poisoned the planet and polluted the air. That will be the secret. That it was us all along.”
Joanna has the ability to crossover between TV, stage, radio, film, modelling and her campaign work. With such diverse talents, Joanna is often on mainstream TV, but she also gets to broaden her wings on channels like Sky Arts where shows like Sensitive Skin are shown.
She says: “I am so proud of channels like Sky Arts because it produces lots of different types of shows. When you are proud of something you have done it is great to see it being aired on TV.
“They are currently showing the series Sensitive skin which I am very happy about.”
I tell her I loved her in the one-off programme, Up in Town, on Sky Arts. It features Joanna as Madison Blakelock, a lady who lives alone and reminisces about her life and loves and her current loneliness. She says: “Oh, I am glad. I was very proud of that. I am just very lucky in my job to have the chance to do so many interesting projects. “You never know what you are going to be doing. You do get type cast sometimes. It is bound to happen, but I have also been very lucky to have such varied parts.”
But of all she’s achieved, Joanna will forever be one of a select group of Bond girls.
And she says: “Can you believe it, I am about to do a radio version of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – where I starred as the Bond girl in 1969. But this time I am Irma Bunt (said in a strong German accent) an agent of Blofeld who is in charge of his Angels of Death. It is fantastic when things like this come back around.”
She is probably best known in recent years as Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. Did she enjoy playing the role of the alcoholic and hilariously rude magazine editor?
Joanna says:”I adored playing Patsy. We would laugh each day until we cried and fell on the floor. Jennifer (Saunders) I adore – she is brilliant girl.
“We were the five Js – Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha, Jane Horrocks and June Whitfield. We also got to have so many wonderful guest stars in every show.”
I ask her how she felt when the BBC decided not to fund Jennifer’s fourth series of Jam in Jerusalem, which saw her play the character Delilah. Is it indicative of women comedy writers not being supported in the industry?
She says: “I don’t think that it is the case that women comedy writers are not supported. It was more a duff decision from a TV executive, which was ridiculous because it was brilliant.”
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