Jonanna Lumley facts
From fashion icon to campaigning national treasure – there’s more to the sixty-something ‘Sensitive Skin’ star, Joanna Lumley, than meets the eye. Did you know…
By Paul Barfoot
Eastern import
Joanna Lamond Lumley was born on 1 May 1946 in Srinagar, in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Her father served in the 6th Ghurkha Rifles, and she remained a travelling child of the Orient until she arrived in what she recalls as being "strange, cold, pale and misty" England at the age of nine.
Lady Lumley
Joanna joined the ranks of aspiring ‘ladies’ at the infamous Lucy Clayton Finishing School, where she learned that nice girls cross their legs at the ankle (a position she adopts when seated to this day). In 2007, she confessed to chat show host, Michael Parkinson, that she is a champion of bringing old-fashioned etiquette back into fashion, and that she had written a foreword for the reissue of Eileen Ascroft’s 1938 book of manners, ‘The Magic Key to Charm’.
Modelling prodigy
At the age of 16, Joanna failed her acting audition at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Armed with perfect curves, leg length and smouldering looks, she turned her attention to modelling. Her formative fashion years were spent as a muse and house model for the legendary British designer Jean Muir, before sashaying down catwalks and becoming one of the top ten most-booked British models of the swinging 60s.
Ad break
Despite her lack of acting training, Joanna landed a TV commercial for Nimble bread in 1969. Dangling from a balloon in a bid to convince the British public to purchase a light-and-airy loaf marked the start of her career as an actress. Her most notable early screen work was as a Bond Girl in the 1969 ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, a 102-episode run as Ken Barlow’s mistress in the popular British soap ‘Coronation Street’ in the early 70s and as the crime-busting Purdey in the 1976 series ‘The New Avengers’.
Cutting edge
The bulky basin cut that Lumley fashioned for her role in ‘The New Avengers’ was to the mid-70s what Jennifer Aniston’s feather-cut was to the mid-90s – every woman wanted one. It was a hairstyle created by the renowned stylists John Frieda and Nicky Clarke, and quickly became dubbed the ‘Purdey bob’. By 1977, Frieda and Clarke were reportedly turning out around ten Purdey bobs a day to their fashion-conscious clientele, and London’s Carnaby Street was awash with Lumley lookalikes.
Headstrong motherhood
Despite the stigma that surrounded being a single parent in the 60s, Joanna refused to reveal the identity of the father of her only son, James, born in 1967. "I have never felt the constraints of social acceptability," defended a convention-breaking Lumley about her decision. Years later, it emerged that Michael Claydon, an Anglo-Indian photographer, was in fact James’ father.
Natural beauty
Joanna freely admits to having a little collagen to iron out a scar on her chin and soften a few deep-set worry lines, but she has had no plastic surgery. She is a rare breed of celebrity that wears her laughter lines with pride. "We've all got a few more wrinkles, but who cares? If you always try to be kind, you'll look like the most beautiful person on Earth – and men will just fall at your feet," announced a stunning-looking Lumley at the 2008 BAFTA Awards. Shortly after, she was voted 6th ‘All-time Sexiest Female’ in a survey conducted by onepoll.com.
Absolute panic
In 1992, Joanna established herself as a comedy goddess by playing the liquid-lunching, cocaine-snorting Patsy Stone in ‘Absolutely Fabulous’. Despite making comedy look effortless, she actually struggled with her outrageous alter ego and tried to bail after her first read-through with the show’s creator, Jennifer Saunders. “I telephoned my agent, Caroline Renton, and asked her to get me out of it: I felt I wasn't up to it, I didn't understand what Jennifer wanted, I was wrongly cast, they must have thought I had talent,” explained Lumley in her 2004 autobiography ‘No Room For Secrets’.
Justice warrior
A committed vegetarian, animal lover and environmentalist, Joanna is a long-time supporter of several lobbying animal rights charities and the UK’s Green Party. But it was her recent humanitarian campaigning for Ghurkha justice that earned her real political notoriety. In May 2009, her tireless efforts to gain UK settlement rights for Nepalese soldiers who had left the British Army with at least four year's service before 1997 paid off and a new British law was passed.
Political power
Following her Ghurkha victory, Joanna was voted as the second favourite choice to replace Gordon Brown as the British Prime Minister in an MSN Entertainment survey. Despite Gordon Brown himself congratulating Lumley on her flair for ”wonderful campaigning” that had “charmed not only the Cabinet, but the whole of the country", the actress made it clear that national politics was not for her. “I am too old to learn the rules, to talk their [MPs] talk or walk their walk,” she declared.
Welcoming voice
Joanna’s rather posh, velvety tones have made her one of Britain’s most popular voiceover actresses. In addition to a catalogue of adverts, audio books and big-screen credits, Joanna is also the voice behind the ‘Welcome to AOL’ greeting that UK users of the ISP hear every time they log on.
