Absolutely Joanna

20/05/2008

Only certain sorts of beauty are skin deep. Other sorts, the most important types of beauty, you only really see when you get under the person’s skin.

 

It’s difficult on meeting Joanna Lumley not to be overawed by someone who remains, in her early 60s, outstandingly beautiful. But by your 60s, the person you are invariably shines out of you, perhaps explaining why she is so often held up as a role model for older women. Joanna is someone who openly recognises just how lucky she has been in life and spends her time trying to play her part in “balancing the scales” as she calls it; and, as we meet in Lambeth to discuss the launch of Emmaus’ new scheme for homeless people, it’s apparent that this is a cause dear to her heart.

 

“I heard about Emmaus through my involvement with Thames Reach, another homeless charity in the Vauxhall area, where I have opened a couple of other homes.  I’ve always been interested in the plight and the conditions that surround people who are homeless and how they find themselves sleeping rough.

“We are all just one fraction away from it ourselves.  It’s almost surreal. One twist of fate, losing your job, a failed marriage or a broken home can cause you to slip through a crack in the floorboards, and you find yourself with nowhere to go.”

 

In the 25 Emmaus Communities around the country, homeless people are given the dignity of having jobs to earn their accommodation, helping to restore a sense of self-worth back into their lives. Companions work by mending, refurbishing and selling donated household goods. 

They stay in the project for as long as it takes to get them “back on the road”.

As Joanna makes clear in her fascinating and often very poetic autobiography “No Room for Secrets”, making do and mend is a philosophy that she holds very dear. The book is a tour through the rooms of her large and rambling house: each item of furniture, photograph or letter she chances upon as she takes the reader round, sparks off recollections of the events and people that have shaped her life.

 

“I’m a tremendous hoarder. I don’t like to throw things away,” she tells me.

 

And the fact that she still sleeps in a bed she bought second hand when she was 19 is testimony to that. She finds herself at odds with today’s throwaway society and it’s plain from her book that she is close to her spiritual roots when living in simplicity. 

 

She has spent a lot of her time in developing countries, raising awareness of the plight of people living in deepest poverty. One of her most memorable television appearances was as a real-life Castaway off the coast of Madagascar, where she appeared quite at ease with her isolation and lack of creature comforts. And her “getaway” home from the hubbub of London is a simple croft in Scotland.

 

After spending much of her childhood in boarding school – her parents being posted to the Far East – she does loves her home, but away from there can still survive as long as she has somewhere to call her own. 

“You only need a little bit of space, but it has to be your space, we all need a room of our own. When I’m rehearsing or in a play, you just need somewhere to go through your lines – even if it’s cramped and the windows of the little room you are in are filthy!”

She comes across as an incredibly resilient person – both in her book and in person - perhaps as a direct result of her childhood. And as she explains in her autobiography, she also tried to teach her son to be resilient. He was born, unplanned, when she was a budding model and actress, and she spent her career weaving her life around him.

“The truth is this: somewhere in life, somewhere in the strange process of growing out of being a baby and into a grown-up person there will always be dreadful, even tragic events, and at some stage you have to learn to cope with them on your own.”

Her role as Patsy endeared her to the nation – in part a pantomime character but, like all pantomime characters, an exaggerated version of part of us all. “Patsy is a figure of nostalgia, doing everything we daren’t do because of our obligations to our families and society.

“I have turned into a school prefect now; but, much as I love my life, I sometimes think I’d like to skip classes and smoke cigarettes in the duck-house again. Patsy is the other person I could have been if I hadn’t turned out to be me.”

Inevitably, it’s the role that most of us remember her for – although her parts in The Avengers and Sapphire and Steel still resonate with older viewers.

But the real Joanna is not necessarily the one you see on the screen, although she has taken fame in her stride. “I have taught myself, as self-preservation, to love equally being recognised and not being recognised; that way, either way, you are as happy as a king.”

As she makes clear, “I’m not a celebrity, I’m an actress.” But she’s also a lot more than that. She’s someone who uses her fame to make a positive difference. “I’m rich now. What am I going to do about it? I think all you can do is keep earning it and giving it away.”