MY HAVEN – JUDY PARFITT

The Call The Midwife actress, 80, in the sitting room of her converted barn in Sussex

1 MAGIC CARPET

My late husband, the actor Tony Steedman, and I converted this barn ourselves. I’ve lived here for 17 years and I love it, it’s so full of light. I made this needlepoint carpet myself too, when I was filming the TV series The Jewel In The Crown in 1983. It took 18 months to film and we spent two months in India – it was lovely doing the needlepoint sitting on a boat on Dal Lake in Kashmir. The show got 28 million viewers and I was nominated for a Best Actress BAFTA for playing sexy, drunken Mildred Layton.

2 DIVA DOG

After Tony died in 2001 my son David said, ‘Get a dog Ma, you’d be happy with a dog around.’ I didn’t know who would look after it when I was working so I put it off. Then in 2012 when I did the first series of Call The Midwife everybody brought their dogs to the set. I think there were seven in all. I thought, ‘Well, I can have a dog too’, so I got Freddie here, a miniature poodle, and he comes everywhere with me. He stays in my trailer, gets spoilt by everyone and despite his size struts around like John Wayne!

3 THIS LITTLE PIGGY

In 1995 I appeared in the film Dolores Claiborne, a psychological thriller adapted from a Stephen King novel. I played Kathy Bates’s paralysed employer Vera Donovan, who Kathy’s character Dolores is suspected of killing. In the film Vera becomes obsessed with a little china pig on her dressing table while Dolores is looking after her, and as we finished I wanted to buy it but was told I couldn’t. Then on the last day Kathy gave it to me in a Tiffany box. She was so kind as well as being a wonderful actress.

4 DEAR HUSBAND

I liked this photo of Tony in a 1974 film called The Abdication with Peter Finch so much I thought I’d try to copy it in oils. It’s very amateurish but it gave me a passion for painting – I find it a wonderful release and pleasure. Tony was amazing – the kindest, most non-judgmental man and he made everything funny. We met in the theatre and were married for 38 years. Sadly he suffered from dementia and in the end my Tony had gone, but I had a child that I loved. My husband had become my child.

5 MAD FOR MIDWIFE

When we finish filming each series of Call The Midwife the production team give the actors a gift – this cake tin is one of them. I’m stopped in the street all the time thanks to my role as Sister Monica Joan – that’s me in the picture with Helen George as midwife Trixie. People say, ‘The cakes are over there!’ to me in supermarkets as Sister Monica Joan’s fond of cake and the other day a manageress gave me a bouquet and said, ‘This is from all of us for the pleasure you’ve given us.’ I couldn’t believe it!

6 PROUD PARENTS

I grew up in Sheffield and this is a picture of my mother Catherine and father Lawrence. I’d always wanted to be an actress but my parents were horrified. At the age of ten I stood outside actress Margaret Lockwood’s room at the Grand Hotel in Sheffield until I was let in, and she told me the training I’d need to follow my dream. Then I wore my father down until he paid for me to go to the Prep Academy for RADA when I was 15. From then on my parents were enormously supportive.