Joanna Lumley reveals she was broke even while starring in top movies

Dame Joanna Lumley is a British film and television icon.

But the 76-year-old actress says she was broke even as she became a household name.

Lumley has revealed that when she was starring as Purdey in the popular television series The New Avengers in 1976, she was struggling to make ends meet.

‘Even when my name was well known, my bank balance was still in the red,’ she told The Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday.

‘People can’t imagine that. They think with fame comes mass money, which of course it doesn’t,’ she continued.

Lumley told the publication that the pay for actors in those days was just a few hundred pounds.

‘In my country, the stars of the Carry On films, some of them got 200 quid for the film. And some of them ended their lives virtually as paupers,’ she said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Lumley addressed whether her flamboyant character in comedy series Absolutely Fabulous, Patsy Stone, is transgender.

‘Jennifer (Saunders, he co-star and Absolutely Fabulous creator) would say, maybe she had that removed, and I’d say, maybe she had it all removed, and then maybe she took hormones,’ Lumley told the paper.

‘Then maybe she was a man, maybe she wasn’t a man for a bit… so you’d create this stepladder of madness which sealed the character.’

Lumley has previously confirmed that the character, who was long suspected to be trans, indeed was.

‘You go back and pick through it, the amount of gay references and ease with which it’s been put into the story, without it being dragged along like a great log of plot,’ she told V Magazine in 2016.

‘It’s really normal that one of her [Edina Monsoon, played by Saunders] ex-husbands now lives with his young boyfriend.

‘It’s completely normal that [Edina] wants Saffy [Edina’s daughter] to be a lesbian or that Serge [Edina’s son] is gay and living in New York. It’s completely normal that Patsy is transgender.’

Lumley is currently starring in Falling for Figaro alongside Australian actress Danielle Macdonald.

She appears as a high-priced voice-coach, who doesn’t think Danielle’s character Millie has got what it takes to become an opera singer.

In January, Lumley said that she was ‘astonished and thrilled’ after being made a dame in the 2022 New Year Honours list.

The actress was honoured for services to drama, entertainment and charitable causes.

Joanna said she was ‘touched beyond words’ to receive the ‘colossal’ honour and described it as the ‘most beautiful present’. 

She continued: ‘I am astonished and thrilled and touched beyond words to receive this colossal honour. 

‘It comes as a complete and unexpected surprise, and is the kindest and most beautiful present imaginable.’

As well as her revered acting career, she has also made a name for herself as a campaigner.

The glamorous model has fought for the rights of Gurkhas to settle in the UK and supported numerous environmental campaigns.

Lumley was made an OBE in 1995, and received the Bafta TV Fellowship at a star-studded ceremony in 2017.

In 2019, she was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Chester in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the arts.

She is best-recognised for starring as outrageously boozy Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous, which also starred Jennifer Saunders as Edina Monsoon.

The sitcom originally ran between 1992 and 1996 but was revived from 2001 to 2004.

Speaking to ITV about her Ab Fab alter-ego, said: ‘She’s got the morals of an alley cat, and I like to think I’m almost diametrically opposed to her in my primness and my properness.

‘I drink – not a lot – and I smoke – not a lot – but Patsy is extreme in everything she does and I think people quite like that.’

In 2016, she and her co-star Jennifer made a triumphant return to the big screen for Absolutely Fabulous The Movie, which included cameos from stars including Kate Moss and Jon Hamm.

Joanna’s other career highlights include her role as Purdey in The New Avengers – a role which propelled her to fame in 1976 – and she also made a lesser-known appearance in 1973 on Coronation Street as Ken Barlow’s posh girlfriend Elaine.

Her movie credits include a role in the 1969 Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, while she appeared in two Pink Panther films.

She also shared a kiss with Leonardo DiCaprio while starring in the Martin Scorsese crime drama The Wolf Of Wall Street.

Joanna was born 9,000 feet up in the Himalayas, in Kashmir, where her father was an officer in the Gurkha Rifles, and she was educated at a convent in Hastings, East Sussex.

After starting out as a model, her talents extended beyond the catwalk and she soon made a name for herself on the stage.

Joanna has two Baftas under her belt for her performance in Ab Fab, and in 2000 she claimed the Special Award for her work in The New Avengers.

Other recent television stints include a guest role in sitcom Motherland as well as ITV’s Finding Alice.

Her upcoming TV projects include Joanna’s Secret Cities, a three-part documentary series for ITV in which she visits Rome, Paris and Berlin.