"I can't imagine not having her in my head," she tells RadioTimes.com, as she sits down for an in-depth interview at her London home. "I haven't been apart from her."
Looking back on her memories of filming An Unearthly Child all those years ago, Ford recalls: "It somehow cemented Susan within me. I think, when I walked through the junkyard and saw the TARDIS, it was a feeling of home."
"They're very much missed. I can't believe that they're no longer here," Ford says. "[Hill] would love to have seen how it progressed and and Russ was there to see the big time happening for us and being part of it.
"It's very important to know how your fellow actor is going to react if you make a slight change in the dialogue...We were all so relaxed with each other. We knew each other so well. You had to jolly well trust each other, because there's so much potential for it to go wrong."
Marco Polo, one of Ford's serials, is still missing in its entirety, with just some audio surviving. Ford says she's "mortified" by the idea that the story can't be watched by fans, adding: "Marco Polo! Such a beautiful one, so beautiful. Such a loss. Well, hopefully it’s not lost forever."
Ford also wasn't always happy with how Susan was portrayed on screen, admitting it "wasn't an immediate yes" when she was asked to take on the role.
Ford adds: "I was very frustrated, because at the time, I was super fit, I was a trained dancer, and I was a very good swimmer and horse rider, and I would have thought they could have brought some of those skills into her character and made her much more interesting," Ford recalls. "I was lucky if I got to sort of climb up a one-foot wall or something. It was disappointing."
It's a situation that Ford admits led her to be envious of later companions, most notably of Billie Piper, whose first appearance as Rose Tyler in 2005 saw her swing across a fiery pit.
"Until then, I think they were almost trying to recreate Susan.... what they envisaged was Susan to be the sort of young girl next door watching Doctor Who and. I can see it's worked, because I've been to quite a few conventions where a couple of girls have come up and said, 'I always wanted to be you.'"
"The part was so important to him. It was everything to him," she says of her late co-star. "And because of that, he was a real perfectionist with it.
"Unless you're doing it seriously, it doesn't mean anything to the audience. If you're thinking, 'Oh, a load of rubbish', then how are the audience going to ever accept what's going on and be entertained by it?
"We got rid of all our giggles about the various monsters in rehearsals, and just as well we did, because sometimes I look back and I think, 'How did I ever keep a straight face?!'"
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"We had a lot of laughs on that because, of course, there's no CGI involved there. It was great, huge pieces of furniture that were mountainous, and we had to actually climb up a huge chain, which was the chain of the plug to go in the sink, and enormous, mountainous sized cats and insects, especially the ant, was not at all nice - it gave me the creeps - but it was great fun."
"I was wanting to leave much earlier [than I did]," she admits. "The thing that happens to all actors is that when they're in a successful thing, suddenly you get lots of offers from other people. And I was having quite a few lovely offers from other people, which I couldn't do because of Doctor Who for one thing, but also it was getting a bit repetitive.
"In spite of what we'd say at the first day reading it, it was getting very repetitive. There was the same thing happening. We'd go off, perhaps in a hurry from somewhere, and so perhaps not set the dials for the correct time, and we'd arrive somewhere and the doors would open, and I was told not to rush out and get lost. And I always used to rush out and get lost or get captured or whatever.
So, the time came for her to leave Doctor Who, with Susan bidding farewell to her grandfather and Ford going on to play a variety of different roles that she hoped would separate her a little from her breakout role.
But, over the years, she kept tabs on Doctor Who, praising the fans who "stuck with it through thick and thin over the years".
Ford has also returned to the character of Susan in the form of Big Finish audio dramas, telling us: "They stretch my character. They make her older and more responsible and do all sorts of things - the sort of things I wanted to do before, they allow me to do."
It might have taken another 18 years, but Ford finally got her wish when she ran into Russell T Davies in 2023: "I ran into his wide-open arms, and he picked me up and swung me around and said, 'I think it's time you came back.'"
"I think enough people out there know by now that something extra was filmed and wasn't shown," Ford points out.
"It's a shame though - I'd loved to have done it, and the bit I did do, I really enjoyed doing, and I loved seeing it. I sort of looked as I was floating in space."
Plus, after feeling like the writers didn't quite do Susan justice, she's taken matters into her own hands, writing a short story for the anthology Doctor Who: The Adventures after, in which she very much saves the day.
Of course, Ford has made no secret of the fact that she'd relish the opportunity to return to Doctor Who to finish Susan's story, declaring with a twinkle in her eye: "You've still got to find me, Grandfather! I'm waiting for that..."
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