When I was at school, I was terrible at algebra and arithmetic, but I was always the best at English and literature. And acting, of course.

And sometimes when I would get in the morning, when we'd go out - we'd see shrapnel and bits of stuff in the streets and bombed buildings, and - but I was evacuated a lot. Every time the blitz got heavy, my parents would take us off to the country.

And then I wrote my first autobiography when I - well, it was 23 years ago. And since then I've written about one book every two years.

I like to remember phone numbers because it keeps your brain active. If you don't use it, you lose it.

My father is Jewish, and I look exactly like him My mother is British, but she's of French extraction.

And I used to write novels and little stories and compositions and I - but I put them away because I started acting when I was 17. So there wasn't much time.

My grandmother spoiled my father rotten and he grew up expecting women to do whatever he wanted. When he married my beautiful mother, Elsa, he expected her to give up her career as a champion ballroom dancer and become a good wife and mother, which she dutifully did.