This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
What’s the view from your sofa?
It depends on the sofa. From one, you can see the telly. From the other, you’re looking through the house, through patio doors and out onto our side return. Our “sit-oot-erie”, as I like call it because you can “sit oot”.
Do you like being outside?
I do. I used to garden more than I do now because we had a bigger one at the time in north London. But this one doesn’t need much looking after. Just a lot of sweeping up.
Elena, your character in A Taste for Murder, runs a restaurant in Capri with her husband: he cooks while she’s front-of-house. Are you a hostess with the mostest in real life?
I don’t know about “the mostest” but I used to host a lot, and I did enjoy it. Elena’s gregarious and welcoming and she loves her job – she’s been married to an Italian for 40 years, so she’s taken on Italian sensibilities. But alongside being the life and soul of the restaurant, she’s also grieving her daughter who has died, caring for her granddaughter and trying to support her son-in-law, despite their very different approaches to grief. There are layers to Elena that really appealed to me.
Why did you become an actor?
At my secondary school, there was a drama club, a theatre-going club, and a monthly cinema night – so it was all going on. I’d been in all the productions but it hadn’t occurred to me that you could turn it into a career until a classmate suggested I go to drama school. The careers advisor told me I’d need four Highers [the Scottish equivalent of A-Levels] to get in, which I wasn’t going to get. That turned out to be b******s though. I ignored him, applied and got into RSAMD [the former Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland]. And here I am.
Have you ever been out of work?
For a few months, after my son was born, but nothing so bad that I had to go onto the streets and sell my body.
Like every good Scottish actor, you’ve “done a Taggart”…
I might even have “done Taggart twice”.
In the late 1980s/early 1990s, you played Lady Jane Felsham in Lovejoy alongside Ian McShane, which pulled in audiences of 10 million-plus. Did you feel famous then?
Definitely not. They asked me to go on Wogan with Ian and I couldn’t work out why. But I went on, and it was a disaster. I just sat there like a rabbit in headlights while Ian effortlessly held court. It was a lovely job though, and I still get recognised from it: men in their 40s telling me that they used to fancy me.
Learn anything about antiques?
As anyone who saw me on Celebrity Antiques Road Trip knows, I don’t know my arse from my elbow. I picked up some rubbish on that.
You must also get recognised from Downton?
After a fashion, I suppose. If I’m out with Jim [Carter, who played Carson] and Lesley [Nicol, Mrs Patmore] and we’re standing together, people will snap away, taking pictures and ignoring me. They don’t recognise me. I blame – or thank – Mrs Hughes’s wig.
Did Downton change your life?
There was a while afterwards where I was being offered housekeepers ad nauseam. So I resisted those and looked for other parts. There’s no denying I’m now of an age to play grandmothers but I want grandmothers with a bit of oomph, or with a horrible dark secret. No staid old ladies, thank you!
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A Taste for Murder airs Wednesdays at 9pm on ITV1, with all episodes available now on ITVX.
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