Very hair raising secret of Joanna’s fabulous locks
FROM that 70s Purdey cut to Patsy’s Ab Fab beehive, hair has helped define Joanna Lumley’s career.
In and out of studios all her working life, she’s spent hours under the care of professional make- up artists and hairdressers.
But now aged 71, she’s happy to look after those matters – by cutting and dying her hair herself, using shopbought products.
Despite having an estimated £12million fortune the actress admits she is too ‘mean’ to pay for a professional stylist.
In an interview she explains: ‘I’m mean and I can’t see the point of spending tons of money when I can just get something off a supermarket shelf and stick it on my head.’
One would think her wealth might also mean she could afford a chauffeur-driven car or expensive cosmetics.
Yet she insists her favourite mode of transport is the Tube, because it is ‘the most thrilling way to travel’.
And the secret to her complexion is a £4 pot of Astral moisturiser, which she has used for over 40 years.
The Purdey style was born when the actress went to a London salon and told a talented young hairdresser called John Frieda to cut it like a ‘prep school boy’.
That was at a time when women wore their hair long, but Lumley wanted her character in the 1976 TV series The new Avengers to be instantly recognisable.
‘Luckily the world loved it and I became the patron saint of hairdressers,’ she recalled in 2011.
Patsy Stone’s beehive from Absolutely Fabulous also had a life of its own in the 1990s. But by 2015 Lumley admitted she would have to give her hair a ‘bit of a break’ and wear a wig during filming for the movie version of the show.
In the interview with Radio Times, she said her early modelling career hindered her acting work for a long time.
She said: ‘Unlike now when it’s perfectly acceptable, like lovely little Lily Cole, in those days, it was the worst thing you could have done. People were terribly supercilious, saying, “Oh, she won’t be able to learn her lines.” So I played endless pretty girlfriends. I was the pretty girlfriend in Steptoe and Son and in Coronation Street, general hospital, Up the Workers…’ Well known for backing causes such as gurkha residency rights and opposing live animal exports, the star says she is planning to donate her organs after her death.
She said: ‘I’ve got one of those donor forms that says ‘‘Take anything you want,’’ so I’m not sure what they do with you. I hope they bundle you out to feed you to the foxes, after they’ve plundered all the nice bits you’ve got left, if there are any nice bits after I’ve drained so much champagne.’
having celebrated her birthday on May 1 she thinks about death ‘every day’ but insists ‘You’re only here for a short time... what you want to do is make sure that you don’t waste life.’