Dame Joanna Lumley has held national-treasure status for some time; she is loved for her acting, admired for her travel documentaries and commended for her charity work.
Chatting to her, you’re welcomed into a world of charm, where things are "gorgeous", "adorable" or "divine". Polite, classy and self-deprecatingly funny, she is also clever and entertaining, as well as quintessentially English.
Sitting at her kitchen table to speak to HELLO! via video call in her velvety, plummy tones, she is surrounded by the detritus of home life and smoking a cigarette, à la Patsy, the character she is best known for playing in Absolutely Fabulous.
In her prime
Still as glamorous as in her former modelling days, Joanna has become the perfect poster woman for positive ageing, which she finds hilarious.
© Photographed by Dan Kennedy, Good Housekeeping April 2023"Positive ageing? The truth is, even when you’re four, you’re ageing!" she snorts.
"They mean becoming decrepit and being quite jolly about it. I do feel positive about ageing, because it’s inevitable. And if things are going to happen, face it with cheerfulness. I’m jolly lucky to be alive, and still be working, and still learning."
Her tips on ageing well are pretty simple: wear a smile, dye your hair and grab a nap whenever or wherever you can.
Positive ageing? The truth is, even when you’re four, you’re ageing. They mean becoming decrepit and being quite jolly about it.
"I’ve got what the Australians call a ‘resting bitch face’. Sometimes I catch myself in a shop window and think, ‘Holy smoke, you look dreadful,’ but if you smile, you don’t. I’ve always been very smiley," she says, breaking into a wide grin.
"And it’s nice now that I’m granny age, as I can smile at anybody. In the olden days, if you smiled at everybody, you’d get into a few scrapes."
© Photographed by Dan Kennedy, Good Housekeeping April 2023She’d have white hair by now, she says, but continues to colour it for work. "It’s kind of a brown colour now," she says, ruffling it with her fingers. "Basically, it’s whatever I got in Sainsbury’s last week."
To keep up her energy levels, she’ll doze or do a crossword puzzle. "I lie down quietly, like an old tomb, legs together, and get a catnap," she says.
One of Joanna’s "secret hopes" is to spend more time with the people who matter to her, because "you don’t know when the day is going to come when they’ve gone, they’ve gone or they’ve gone", she says, counting people off on her fingers. She recently visited a school friend in Wiltshire whom she hadn’t seen for 65 years.
"I want to spend more time with my beloved husband," she adds, referring to her partner of 39 years, the conductor Stephen Barlow, 71.
"We love travelling, seeing people, going to our little cottage in Scotland. When I feel overloaded, my mind flies away to the hills and the valleys there, the sound of the river and great hawks flying in the sky," she says.
© Photographed by Dan Kennedy, Good Housekeeping April 2023Turning 80
Next May, she will celebrate her 80th birthday – although not with a party. "I’ve never had ‘look at me’ parties, so why would I suddenly start now?
"My family was never one for parties. My father had a wonderful saying – ‘far better not’ – which he applied to practically everything. I might well be working," she adds, hopefully.
"It’s rather good luck to be working on your birthday."
To read the full exclusive interview, pick up the latest issue of HELLO! on sale in the UK on Monday. You can subscribe to HELLO! to get the magazine delivered free to your door every week or purchase the digital edition online via our Apple or Google apps.
