Exclusive interview

CELIA IMRIE “I am very lucky to be

She’s one of Britain’s ust imagine the scene. Celia swears “the ship is big enough You’re cruising on the for you to get lost in,” but also admits most in-demand aliveglorious Queen Mary 2. she’s frequently recognised. “It means actresses, a bestselling You decide to throw caution that you have to be very” polite and author and doting to the wind and join the say hello to people but I never mind Jfencing class and after a frenetic that actually. It doesn’t cost anything single mum, and clash of swords you lift your mask to say hello and smile.” following a perilously to discover that the rather balletic, is exactly as I had close brush with death, energetic lady you have been lunging imagined she would be – warm, Celia Imrie is more at is none other than Celia Imrie, the thoughtful, a bit naughty and dripping plummy-voiced star of the Marigold with refined English courtesy. But determined than ever Hotel films, , Bridget there’s also a sense of determined to seize every day, she Jones’s Diary and bestselling novelist urgency about her. Even though she tells Juliet Rieden. to boot. It could happen, really. hates to be defined by age, at 65 she’s Celia regularly hops from acutely aware that she must grab life Southampton to New York on the by the throat to make each day count. liner and always throws herself into The cruise is pertinent. Her new the on-board activities. “I’ve probably novel, the witty romp Sail Away about done the journey about seven times sixty-something actress Suzy, whose now. I’m mad about the sea,” she play is cancelled and has to take a explains excitedly. “I go line dancing. job on a liner to work her way back I do the quiz. And, you know, in the home, is inspired by Celia’s ocean middle of the ocean doing a fencing jaunts. The setting is a deliberate class is rather an extraordinary departure from the sunny Belleville-

PAUL STUART/CAMERA PRESS/AUSTRAL. STUART/CAMERA PAUL experience and wonderful.” sur-Mer backdrop to her first two ➝

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best-selling novels. These were inspired I put my mother, by Celia’s second home in Nice, where father, Nanny, she escapes chilly to write in brothers and sisters the beautiful apartment she purchased through. But you can overlooking the Mediterranean. But conquer it and I am that idyll was shattered 20 months here to tell the tale.” ago when a man in a 19-tonne cargo truck drove into crowds of people Battling celebrating Bastille Day on the convention Promenade des Anglais, murdering 86 Celia’s father was and injuring 458 others. Celia was in not happy with his the middle of this terrorist attack, daughter’s choice running for her life. of profession, while “I have imagined all these years that her mother “never Nice gives me a special firework stopped us from doing display for my birthday because on WITNESSING THE what we wanted to do the 14th of July – Bastille Day – there NIGHT OF TERROR IN NICE in terms of our life choices. But I also Above: Celia and Imelda is a display over the sea which is Staunton play contrasting think that she had quite a difficult Celia was part of the throng celebrating doubly beautiful because it is reflected sisters in the newly released time with her possibly disapproving Bastille Day on The Promenade des in the water. And very often I have a film . friends, with this daughter who Anglais in Nice in 2016. But it all turned Left: Celia with decided to go on the stage. In those party because my birthday is the next to horror when a man in a huge truck in The Best Exotic Marigold day,” Celia tells me. (right) mowed people down on a 2km days it wasn’t really done.” Hotel. “Therefore, I was there down on the rampage, killing 86. Fortunately, it didn’t stop Celia and Promenade enjoying the fireworks “too big boned” to make she’s never been out of work. Today with friends. I realised something was it. At that moment Celia she’s part of a fearless, hugely talented wrong when a rather handsome young everything had changed. “When the instilled Celia with an infectious lust stopped eating – a rather group of Britain’s most in-demand couple came running towards me. She attack happened, I felt it was too for living to the full which is reflected simplistic attempt to actresses – all of a certain age – was running in very, very high-heeled difficult to be light-hearted, which I’m in the devil-may-care literary heroines make herself smaller – and including Dames Judi Dench, Maggie shoes and it was very, very fast and trying to be in my writing, the place she has penned and galvanised her fell victim to what then Smith, Helen Mirren, Imelda I remember thinking ‘blimey’. But was in such shock and in respect to into action in her own life. “Without was a very new and Staunton, Joanna Lumley and whatever they had seen was coming everybody there who had to digest being dramatic, I think I’m very lucky misunderstood disease, Penelope Wilton. Her portfolio of towards me. I was with a friend and the trauma of it all.” actually and it just pulls you up and anorexia nervosa. work ranges from Shakespeare, to trying to work out what on earth was And while she remains truly makes you feel grateful for what Following a stint in Chekhov to Nanny McPhee, but it going on and luckily she very cleverly committed to her French life, Celia you’ve got and celebrate every day, she [mum Diana] was too busy giving hospital in London she seemed to was the movie Calendar Girls, in said ‘Celia, for God’s sake, let’s run’. did actually sail away, both in reality which is what I try to do. I know I’m parties and riding her bike and betting be getting better, but then at 14 the which Celia posed naked with a pair I didn’t know what I was running on the Queen Mary 2 for work in sort of slightly running out of time.” on the horses,” Celia explains. “That illness returned and Celia ended up of large iced buns protecting her from but it was terrifying, it was with the US, and in fiction with a new sounds as if she didn’t care about us, being given electro-convulsive therapy modesty, which brought her global seconds to spare that I ran up a side cast of characters who meet on an Marrying nureyev she absolutely did, but she just knew coupled with anti-psychotic drugs and adulation. street and had I not, God knows. ocean-going liner. Celia was born in the heart of that she wasn’t domesticated. She was insulin. Today such treatment would Getting naked was a tough call for “I was in the path of the truck. Following a health scare in 2005, ’s green and pleasant land, very hot on manners and would like be considered barbaric and it certainly Celia. “It could be a kickback from It was ghastly. When I got back when doctors discovered Celia had stockbroker-belt in . me to have married a god-fearing earl left its mark on Celia. anorexia, but I don’t like taking my home there were dead bodies outside two pulmonary embolisms – blood She was the fourth of five children, with plenty of money.” “It’s very weird. I mean I can clothes off in front of myself, let alone my flat. I didn’t know what was clots on the lung – the actress avoids and her radiologist father David Imrie In the Imrie household Celia had remember seeing it happening to the everybody else. However, there were happening. You heard gun shots flying whenever she can and has was 60 when she was born. “He was to fight to be heard. “I was number woman in the same room as me but only a few parts going in that film and things. The not knowing was developed a personal passion for the a Scot and he went from red hair to four out of five so I wasn’t really the you don’t know what is going on and so when I was thrilled enough to horrifying and I am very lucky to be gentilities of sea travel. “People say white, but I only ever remember him eldest, the youngest, the only boy, half the time because they give you land the part I thought, well I cannot alive and that’s the truth. I don’t have ‘How long does that take?’ as if it’s with white hair. the Nanny’s favourite, and so that’s so many drugs. Mostly I shudder now make a fuss.” enough horrifying words to tell you the most awful experience in the “We five were a bit of a noise why I think I’ve spent my whole life when I think of it,” says Celia. Celia’s character is the first to pose how awful it was, but the French have world, but it’s probably about six because he used to have patients to showing off really,” she chuckles. It’s not something she likes to dwell in the buff for the Women’s Institute great dignity and grace and President nights to get to America. I think it’s a the house and I think we were a bit Her passion back then was dancing on, but Celia says she has “got to the calendar shoot when Helen Mirren’s Macron came down a year later and wonderful way to travel and I think more noise than he bargained for.” and especially ballet, which she stage where I think I would quite like character famously announces: “We’re in a way somehow has made the that it will become more and more Celia’s glamorous mother Diana proved to be extremely good at, and to be able to help girls. If you can save going to need considerably bigger buns!” Promenade des Anglais, the route of popular because airports can be such was equally ill-prepared for raising a soon had her whole future mapped one person it’s like saving the world It’s a scene Celia cannot live down. the horror, stop being a graveyard, hell now, can’t they,” she posits. rumbustious brood and handed over out. “I wanted to be a prima ballerina and I am a terribly good example of “When I was out for a walk by the because that’s what it was.” Both the health scare and the Nice much of the real parenting to the and marry Rudolf Nureyev,” she says. somebody who has come through it. sea these gents shouted out, ‘Oh look, After this Celia felt she couldn’t tragedy, and possibly I suggest, the “completely wonderful” Nanny Then at age 11 those dreams were It’s a terrible, terrible waste of life it’s bigger buns’ and I thought ‘Oh

write about Nice in the same way, unstoppable march of time, have Thelma, whom Celia adored. “I think IMAGES. GETTY dashed when she was told she was and I regret very much the worry that dear, how embarrassing’,” she laughs. ➝

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Celia and her son Angus, whom she had “by agreement” with (pictured left). Angus, now 23, is making a name for himself as an actor in theatre and on radio and TV.

Celia’s characters are serial transgressors – in the Marigold Hotel movies she plays the mischievous, extremely flirty Madge Hardcastle. And in her own life Celia also refuses to bow to convention. At 42 she gave birth to her beloved son Angus. Fearing she may have left it too late and having never had a desire to be married, Celia made an arrangement with her close friend the old block, forging a career in their Celia’s latest movie, the feel-good actor Benjamin Whitrow (who played footsteps as an actor. But it wasn’t Finding Your Feet, sees her indulge Mr Bennet in the BBC adaptation of always easy for Celia. “I did cop it her passion for dancing. She’s also Pride and Prejudice). “I said to Ben, from some people who didn’t think it about to embark on a third season ‘look I’m not going to ask you for a was the very best thing to have done, of the US TV comedy drama series penny and I will bring the child up on but it seemed to work,” she says. Better Things and “my first horror my own if you can agree with that’.” Unsurprisingly, Celia’s mother was film called Malevolent where I play Benjamin died last year at the age one of the more fervent naysayers. a really grim Scot”. of 80 and while Celia has never “I remember saying to her, ‘Mum, At an age when most people are previously admitted to a romantic would you mind very much if I had a thinking of retiring, Celia couldn’t relationship between them, she tells baby and I wasn’t married?’ [Celia be busier, or happier. I ask her what me, “actually there was much more was already pregnant when she posed advice she would give young girls to it than that because we did love the question]. There was the longest wanting to follow in her footsteps. each other and we had a very happy pause I ever can remember and then “You have got to want to do it or die. time when we were all together. I she said, ‘I’d hate it.’ I have a feeling I love not knowing what is going to didn’t encroach on him and it was that it’s because she was worried happen next – some people would hate very happy most of the time and about her rather posh friends,” recalls that. And you have to not mind if certainly his relationship with Angus Celia, who was quietly devastated. you’ve got not a very salubrious place was really quite wonderful.” “It was difficult but I can assure to live … but it’s a great life.” AWW Angus is clearly the product of two you she came round and absolutely very loving and supportive parents adored Angus, so I am very relieved Sail Away by Celia Imrie, published by

and at 23 is proving to be a chip off and happy about that.” Bloomsbury, is on sale from April 1. IMAGES. GETTY REX. PRESS/AUSTRAL. STUART/CAMERA PAUL

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