Lesley-Anne Down has been one of the most successful and beautiful actresses in the world for decades, but she is finally bringing down the curtain on her career at the age of 70. However, the star of TV shows such as Dallas, Sunset Beach, The Bold And The Beautiful and Upstairs, Downstairs, and films such as The Pink Panther Strikes Again, is going out on a high note.
In what is likely to be her last screen appearance, Lesley-Anne plays Margaret Thatcher in Reagan, the upcoming biopic of the former US president, played by Dennis Quaid. “I’m excited for everyone involved, especially Dennis, who has a great chance of winning an Oscar,” she says.
Lesley-Anne admits she was very surprised to get the role. “At first, my aim wasn’t to be a laughing stock because I’m not Margaret Thatcher at all. My next aim was to make her real, because she’s easy to make fun of, like they did in Spitting Image,” says Lesley-Anne, who took advice from Steve Nallon, the voice of Mrs T on that show.
Lesley Anne Down during a photo shoot at her North London home in 1972
‘I tried to make it tangible, not a caricature. If you mention Mrs Thatcher to young people, they say, “Who?”, so I wanted to please those who don’t know who she is or that time and place. I actually rewrote my scenes because the information in them was only for people who really knew the story. They were grateful and did it my way.
“I’m happy to be a part of this movie, but it’s not like it’s going to change my life or my career. From about the age of 14, I’ve been constantly changing clothes, shoes, makeup, hair, jewelry and everything else. I don’t really work anymore because I don’t want to put myself in a situation where other people are telling me what to do.”
She recently turned down a role in The Panic, a film her husband, American cinematographer Don FauntLeRoy, is working on. “They wanted me to go to Buffalo, New York, for that, but I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of work!’ So I stayed home and watered the garden.”
Today she’s wearing a pink T-shirt, white shorts and almost no makeup at the Marietta, Georgia, home she shares with Don. They moved here four years ago from Malibu, quite a contrast to her upbringing in south London with her caretaker father Percy and mother Isabella.
‘Even though we were poor, we went to Butlin’s for the holidays. My mum made me a costume and I won the prize for best costume. I won a talent show singing I Only Want To Be With You and the Miss Ribena Picture Of Health competition. The other mums hated my mum because she won everything. When I saw an advert in a newspaper saying ‘child model wanted’ I applied. I got an agent, went from modelling to dancing to acting, left school and never looked back.’
Her first screen appearance was in the 1969 film The Smashing Bird I Used To Know, and her career has seen her share the screen with a host of co-stars including Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Sean Connery, but she says she never enjoyed acting. “Jobs happened and I got on with it, but did I ever feel comfortable? No. I’m untrained and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, I just opened my mouth and talked. Nobody ever hired me for my brains.”
Knowing what you do now, what would you tell your younger self if you could go back? “I would tell her, ‘Don’t be so stupid. Be stronger. Don’t do what other people want you to do. ‘ Back then, if you took a job, you were totally at their beck and call. I hated that. I shouldn’t have been in this industry, I should have been something else, like a missionary. I was very religious as a child. If I could have chosen a different life, I probably would have. Just talking about my life, happiness, joy of living, I would have been happier not doing what I did.
In her starring role as Georgina in the 1970s television show Upstairs, Downstairs
The actress, seen posing in New York in 1979, says she still receives “a ton a week” from fan letters.
“I’ve never liked looking at myself. They used to do raw shots at lunchtime and everyone would come in and look at them, but I never did it, I couldn’t stand it. And I’ve never felt beautiful or looked in the mirror and thought that.”
But many men did. “It wasn’t nice,” she says. “When it came to the rich and famous, it was more than just a nuisance. There was no protection back then. I felt powerful. I was always with someone, then I met someone else and moved on. I was a bad, naughty person, really.”
After ending a ten-year relationship with Bruce Robinson, the screenwriter of Withnail & I, she married Argentine filmmaker Enrique Gabriel in 1980. The marriage lasted 18 months. In 1982 she married William Friedkin, the late director of The French Connection and The Exorcist. They had a son, Jack, in 1982 and divorced in 1985.
“I was already over Bruce,” she says. “Henry was lovely, but I should never have married him. I did it to completely separate myself from Bruce. William was a brilliant director, but a lunatic psychopath. An abusive, horrible man. Evil.”
She met Don in 1984, when they were working on the hit miniseries North And South. They married in 1986 and their son George was born in 1998. “He’s a very good man,” says Lesley-Anne, or LA, as her friends called her when she lived in Los Angeles for 40 years. “We’ve been very much ‘there’ for each other.”
She says she felt “very, very, very grateful” when she turned 70 in March, in part because at 54 she had a “brutal” battle with breast cancer. “I ended up having a double mastectomy because I wanted to, not because I needed to. They didn’t want me to have it, but I’m 1,000 percent glad I did it because it greatly reduced the chances of it coming back. Of course it scared me. I remember praying a lot in the middle of the night while Don was sleeping. I prayed that I would be given enough life to see George become an adult.”
Six months later, Lesley-Anne was feeling tired and sad, so she had her first facelift, and to this day she gets Botox three times a year and facials every three weeks. “I remember reading that beautiful women take a lot longer to age than people who have never been considered super beautiful. I can’t say I feel that way. Ageing doesn’t affect me,” she says. “I look after myself and I look happy, and if you look happy, that’s all you can ask for.”
There is a Facebook page dedicated to Lesley-Anne, which mainly features photos from her prime. And she still receives “a ton of letters a week” from fans around the world. “I have to be honest, I don’t read them. I don’t have the energy or the time, but I thank them and send them a photo, which is usually what they want. Any nude photos I get I tear up and throw in the bin, and then send them one of my face!”
Now that she has more free time, Lesley-Anne is thinking about writing her memoirs.
She plays Margaret Thatcher in Reagan, the upcoming biopic of the former US president.
Lesley-Anne is still active on X (Twitter), where she often discusses the current US presidential candidates. Following the death of her North And South co-star Kirstie Alley in December 2022 from bowel cancer at the age of 71, Lesley-Anne defended her from online criticism. “Kirstie was a very strong and political person, and the left thinks people who aren’t left-wing are evil. Doing it to people who are alive is bad enough, but doing it to people who have passed away is hell.”
However, he adds about Alley: “We were never really friends, not even when we did North and South. I never had any friends in the industry. Don is my only friend in the industry.”
Now that she has more time on her hands, Lesley-Anne is thinking about writing her memoirs, although she would like people to remember her in a simple way: “As someone who was kind and to be happy to have known me.”
And as an actress? I don’t give a shit! You know what?
Reagan is coming soon to theaters
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