- Creator of Upstairs Downstairs has not changed despite her age
- Jean Marsh, 78, suffered a stroke shortly before filming Upstairs Downstairs
- Still giddy and giggly over men, refusing to let her age or health affect her
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Sparky: Jean Marsh is in irrepressible form
Jean Marsh doesn’t beat about the bush. ‘You know I’ve been ill?’ she says the moment we sit down.
She’s referring to the stroke she suffered 18 months ago, shortly before filming began on a revived series of Upstairs Downstairs for the BBC.
Jean created the original Seventies series with her great chum Dame Eileen Atkins, in which she starred as parlour maid Rose Buck, stoking many a flash-of-long-drawers-while-bent-over-the-coal-scuttle male fantasies.
Needless to say, her stroke caused quite a hullabaloo. ‘It’s odd because the day it happened, I said: “I’m not ill,†and I fought,’ she explains.
‘It was amazing. I had had a stroke and a heart attack but I knew I’d be all right. I think it’s because I’m an actress.
‘If you didn’t know me and you sat down and we had a chat, you would have no idea how old I was, or know that I’d been il l, would you?
'I suppose I do have a kind of quiet energy and I’m enchanted by people. I look at them and think: “Oh, he’s bought a wonderful knobbly carrot.†Everything I notice.’
Which is how this interview with the wondrously eccentric Jean Marsh kicks off. We meet in a bijou London hotel where she’s turned up in a pair of bright red wellies, prettied up with plastic flowers.
She’s right about this you’d-have-no-idea-how-old-I-was thing. She’s actually 78 (‘80 in a year-and-a-half’) but packs more va-va-voom than most 40-year-olds.
Today, she’s particularly giddy following a shoot with our dashing photographer.
‘I do like men very much indeed,’ she confides. ‘When I’m out shopping, I look at somebody who’s buying something or sitting down, and I look at him and think: “Mmmm,†however old he is. It’s because you should like men.
‘Of course I think about sex, don’t you? It would be crazy not to. You look at the lovely photographer and think .?.?. Of course it’s out of the question, but I like him. He’s a good photographer and he’s attractive.
‘Women look at men like that, and â€" not so much here, but in France â€" men look at me. They might be very happily married but they just think: “Nice.â€â€™ She shrugs. ‘That’s how it is.’
Jean has been turning heads now for as long as the Queen has been on the throne. She was married, briefly, when she was very young to actor (and legendary Doctor Who) Jon Pertwee, who died in 1996.
He loved her very much and even suffered a breakdown after she left him. ‘I was 19 and Jon was in this 30s. In our 20s we change. He didn’t change. I changed because I grew up.’
Over the years Jean has been loved by many exceptional men, but has always been the one to end the relationship.
Still got it: Ms Marsh may be 78, but is as radiant as ever in the 21st century remake of Upstairs Downstairs
She says Albert Finney, who followed her marriage to Jon, was ‘just a chum’ and that she’s loved ‘everybody and nobody.’ ‘I’ve had very close friends and one very important lover,’ she says. ‘I’ve had lovely men in my life but then I got on with working.’
It’s impossible to not be charmed as she snatches at memories from her colourful past â€" many hilarious, some enormously sad.
This ‘important lover’ was, you see, film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, with whom she enjoyed a lengthy relationship. At the age of 39 she lost his baby. Doctors told her that if she wished to have another, she would need an operation to enable her to carry full term. She decided, at almost 40, that she was ‘past it.’
‘I think about what he might have been,’ she says wistfully of the baby she lost. ‘He’d have been 30, 40 years old. Of course it makes me sad â€" or it did. But sad, not mis erable. It’s a past long gone.’ Her sparky eyes drift for a moment; I sense she’s back in the horror of losing her child. Then she shakes herself. Jean refuses to wallow in what-ifs.Â
We’re actually here because the fantasy film, Willow, in which Jean co-starred as the villainous Queen Bavmorda with Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley, is being released on Blu-ray for its 25th anniversary. She lights up as she recalls the film on which Kilmer and Whalley fell in love.
Original: Jean Marsh in the Seventies version of Upstairs Downstairs
‘It was so exciting for the two of them,’ she says. ‘They met and fell in love and it was wonderful. They got married and had two children. They’re divorced now.’
Her face falls. ‘I hope they’re still happy. Everybody was wonderful on that film. I went to the Cannes Film Festival and had two suites.
'They even said: “You can stay on if you like.†I said: “For nothing?†And they said: “Yes, we love you.â€â€™
Meeting Eileen Atkins in her 30s was pivotal, she says. They were both ferociously bright women from working class homes who met when Eileen was freshly divorced from her first husband, actor Julian Glover, and Jean had separated from actor Kenneth Haigh after the best part of ten years.
‘We were exactly the same age [their birthdays are a month apart], both sort-of working class and we were always laughing,’ says Jean.
‘About that time, in 1967, The Forsyte Saga was on and we kept asking: “Who does the laundry in their house? Who does the cooking?†So we started to plan Upstairs Downstairs.’
Today, Eileen and Jean remain close friends who often meet for dinner when they’re both in the same country. Jean cooks. There won’t be more revivals of Upstairs Downstairs, though. The recent remake wasn’t a huge success, and by the time it ended a year ago just 4.45?million people were watching â€" while 10.5?million had tuned into the finale of ITV’s Downton Abbey a few months earlier.
‘It wasn’t a mistake doing the new series; it was fine. But it was too near Downton. It’s just one of those things.
‘I don’t think there will be any more Upstairs Downstairs. It’s very sad. We’ve all thought about it, but when it’s been the biggest success you’ve had in your life, why worry about it?’
Jean was reading from one of her three published books to a group in Gloucestershire when she suffered her stroke 18 months ago.
‘I felt peculiar,’ she says. ‘I said: “What’s the matter? I know I’m not feeling wonderful but if you just give me time .?.?.â€
‘Then an ambulance came. I said: “Let me go back to London.†They said: “No, you’ve had a stroke.†But I said: “I haven’t.†So they said: “Look at that.â€â€™ She holds out her left hand, which shakes slightly.
After three weeks in hospital in Gloucestershire, she spent a week in a hospital in Chelsea before being discharged.
The toughest part about having been ill was giving up her cottage in rural Berkshire. She put it on the market four months ago, thinking it would take at least a year to sell, but it went in just five weeks.
‘I have my little flat in Chelsea, it’s very nice but very small,’ she says. ‘I’ve got to get somewhere bigger. I’m rather bottled up.’
Where will she go? ‘I don’t know. I’d like a roof terrace and two or three rooms. I like being on the top floor. My apartment has a window looking onto the green. It’s such a pleasure. Then you see the blokes.’
And suddenly she’s as giddy as a convent schoolgirl on a field trip in Berlin. ‘You look at a man and think: “He’s attractive. He’s interesting. I like the way he looks. Lovely shoes.â€â€™
Then h er mind jumps. ‘I can’t buy clothes because I haven’t any room .?.?. All my clothes are away. They’ll be chucked because I don’t want them now. I want new ones. Who’d have thought at my age you would start again ever?’
With which the delightfully dotty Jean dons her prettied-up wellies to splash through the puddles home.
The Willow 25th Anniversary Blu-ray is out now.
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