I'm sure people in the business have said: She's too old for that part. I don't hear about it because your agent protects you from those negative things.

It was in India that I started my acting career, courtesy of my parents, long before I set foot on stage in England. They headed a company of travelling players performing Shakespeare up and down the land.

My parents were very volatile but very loving. My father would get jealous if my mother looked at somebody. I used to be insanely jealous. It comes out of insecurity. It can come and go, but you get to the point in life where you don't have this raging jealousy and protectiveness about your world.

I hope to start enjoying flirting again when I'm 70, like my mother did.

I do still get the odd fan letter about The Good Life, clearly written by somebody aged 18, who says: Will you send a photograph? And I think: Maybe it's kinder not to. I'm deeply into my 50s now.

I don't think, until you've actually lost somebody you really love, that you can go through that door that allows you to be grown-up.

When I was little I always thought I was marked out, special, on the verge of something momentous. I used to tingle with anticipation.