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"Being a character actress means you're not very pretty really," she says softly, smiling. She and her husband, actor Timothy West, envy their 28-year-old son Sam, also a successful actor, because, she adds, "he'll never lose a part through not looking good enough, which has happened to both of us. A blow to the ego? Yes, but you tend to think, 'Here we go again.' There's a wonderful line by Thornton Wilder: a 12-year-old girl is rubbing her cheeks to make them look attractively pink and her mother tells her, 'Stop that. You're quite pretty enough for all normal purposes.' I think I'm quite pretty enough for all normal purposes."
Surely not, when she's had a career as successful as hers? "Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish," she says quickly, raising her voice. "We're slaves to opportunity. It's very much a matter of luck. Tim and I are extraordinarily lucky, but there have been many disappointments - shows failing, not getting parts, being very short of money and out of work."
They come from thespian backgrounds. Tim's parents were both actors, and so was her mother, but she "retired" when she married - "she had very strong ideas about children and all that." Her father was a cotton salesman, "a sweet man," who didn't mind his only daughter being called Prunella after a play of that name her mother was performing in Harrogate when she was 17 - and fell in love with the leading man. They seem to have been eccentric in the most gentle, British way, living in a rented farmhouse in Surrey without running water or electricity.
She pauses before building to a modest crescendo of indignation: "'Luvvie'. It is a word never, ever heard within the profession. It is an iniquitous invention of the press, a hysterical term used to devalue something which is true and they are thus afraid of. One worries when one reads it in the Guardian because they are supposed to be on my side. 'Luvvies'," she announces with passion, "do not exist."
"I had a sweet letter from her private detective or someone who said he had to stop himself from standing up. That was the most wonderful, lovely compliment. I didn't enjoy doing it on television at all. It was bliss to be allowed to have a corgi, even though she was a frightful 'star' - it would have been too expensive to have one on stage - but because the Queen is often seen on television it wasn't a first, and it became perfectly obvious in close-up that this wasn't HMQ herself. It was P Scales in a wig, and that's not so much fun. I was very disappointed in myself. Maybe that's actors' paranoia or, as Tim says, 'galloping sensitivity'."
Earlier this year she had a small part in her first Hollywood film, Wolf, with Jack Nicholson. "It was very jolly and I loved it. When I became an actress Hollywood was nothing to do with anything I wanted to do. It was like going to Timbuktu. I thought acting was about trying to be as good as you can in stage plays. I enjoyed radio, and broadcasting is still a great joy to me. The scenery is so much more expansive - you have to imagine it yourself, and there are no limits - and you can do boring jobs like ironing while you listen.
"Usually I absolutely hate watching myself, but have an irresistible urge to fast-forward to my next bit to see if I was OK. That's vanity, of course. Perhaps it's self-obsession. I challenge anyone to watch themselves with detachment. I find television soporific. It sends me to sleep, even when I'm on, and especially when Tim is. It's a source of great domestic strife. He says I was sitting there one evening with my crocheting watching some performance of his and when it ended I said, 'Jolly good, darling.' But as the next programme started I said, 'Oh, it's darling Peter Barkworth. Where are my glasses?'"
"You," I say. She gives a mock imperious glare and screeches, "Nooooooarrrrr. After the children were born [their second son, Joseph, 25, is studying to become a teacher] I was reluctant to work, but Tim kicked me back and I'm grateful. It was quite painful but I think ultimately it made me a better mum. We spent virtually all our money taking them with us wherever we went. I felt it was my duty when we hit a new town to dangle babies at six o'clock on a Sunday evening so the local paper could carry a picture and perhaps entice a few people into the theatre. It's a professional obligation, not something I personally relish, but it's no good acting your knickers off if no one knows what you're doing and where.
She married Timothy West in 1963 when she was 30 ("My mother thought I'd be left on the shelf. I didn't") and they have lived in the same house near Wandsworth Common for 26 years. They also own a 60ft narrowboat, on which she relaxes - sometimes causing herself embarrassment.
She'll be living on the boat again next month while she directs Tim in Alan Bennett's Getting On, at the Quarry Theatre in the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds. "I haven't directed him since 1982, when we did Uncle Vanya in Perth. It was one of the happiest jobs we've done, contrary to all expectations. I enjoy directing. It makes you a better and more compliant actor because you understand the problems better. Why should anyone be surprised if an actor turns out to be a good director? We work with several of them every year, so we know what doesn't work - to put it no higher than that."
She has cheese to finish her claret, and then looks at her watch. "Golly," she says, "I must totter off," and she exits through the still crowded dining room, nibbling at brie - radiant, reliable and even a touch regal.
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