‘Wrinkles are OK on men but not on women’

created something of a stir. “I was 21 and earning £10 a week as Juliet in Romeo And Juliet. For the bedchamber scene, which was dimlylit, we had no clothes on. The press picked up on the nudity aspect and gave the impression we were nude for the whole play.

“Outraged people wrote to the theatre saying they were going to throw rotten eggs and tomatoes at us. None of that actually happened. My granny came from Cornwall to see it and was disappointed not to see more of the Romeo!”

The publicity didn’t do Susan any harm. “I was very quickly doing telly and films,” she says, with one memorable early outing being Under Milk Wood starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

“I remember being freezing cold on the side of a Welsh mountain and the director shouting through a megaphone, ‘Be sexy!’ That happened to me a lot.

“I once auditioned for a James Bond film when I had a terrible hangover. I had to lie on a bed when a stand-in 007 entered the room. They kept plumping the pillows and saying, ‘Be sexy!’ but all I wanted to do was throw up. The director thought I looked too sickly to be a Bond girl.”

Which leads us to a topical discussion about casting-couch culture. “I experienced every day in the 1970s casual sexism – sexual advances and remarks and a DETERMINED: Susan Penhaligon aims to carry on working for as long as possible; right, her first photograph for actors’ directory Spotlight in 1970; with Frank Finlay in Bouquet Of Barbed Wire

The actress once known as the British Bardot decries sexism in the film business and swears she will never have a facelift

chauvinistic attitude. That was the norm. I don’t know any actress from the 1970s who did not experience some kind of sexual approach. I do have stories but I’m not going to tell them.”

Penhaligon, who posed naked for an unpublished shoot for Playboy, adds: “Photographers would say, ‘I can’t carry on taking pictures unless you take your top off’.”

Her big break came in 1976 when she was cast as the provocative Prue in ITV’s Bouquet Of Barbed Wire, a mould-breaking series which raised issues of incest and domestic abuse.

“I’m really proud of that,” she says. “It had a great story and was very well done, I had a wonderful part and worked with great people like Frank Finlay. Then there were only three British TV channels and we got 26 million viewers so that meant instant fame.”

In the early 1980s she played Helen, the glamorous sister of Dame Judi Dench’s awkward character Laura in ITV sitcom A Fine Romance.

“I was over the moon to be working with Judi who has been one of the biggest influences on my acting. You can’t act like Judi Dench. Sometimes you watch her working and think, ‘I’m never going to do what she does. I’m going to give it up’.”

SUSAN describes herself at the height of her success as “insecure” and adds: “I’d no idea I was as attractive as everybody was saying”.

She married three times: Nicholas Loukes from 1971 to 1972 – her co-star in that seminal production of Romeo And Juliet – documentary film-maker David Munro (1974 to 1981) and actor Duncan Preston (1986 to 1992). She and Duncan reunited for a longer spell – during which she appeared on Emmerdale with him – but they parted again in 2014.

“I’m single now and very happy – the happiest I’ve ever been,” insists Susan. “If another relationship happens, fine, but I’m not going out of my way to look for it.”

Sharing Susan’s life and home is photographer Truan Munro, her 38-year-old son from husband number two. “Truan is very important to me. We get along fine. He’s not married but I’d love to be a granny!”

Indeed she says she plans to live – and act – to a ripe old age, adding with a laugh: “I’ll just keep working till I can’t remember the lines!”

For UK tour dates of The Importance Of Being Earnest go to theimportanceofbeingearnest.co.uk