My life through a lens

Celebrities share the stories behind their favourite photographs. This week it’s actress Jenny Seagrove, 63

1985 In 1983 I read A Woman Of Substance and thought about buying the rights because Emma Harte was a really interesting part. Then I was asked to audition for an adaptation and got the job. The novel’s author Barbara Taylor Bradford loved the series [pictured, Jenny as Emma with Joris Stuyck as David Kallinski] and we became friends. It was huge. I went over to America, but it was a bad time in my personal life and I made wrong decisions. I was very hot and then the heat went. I was up against people like Michelle Pfeiffer for roles and I knew I wouldn’t get cast. Perhaps I should have stayed there, but now I wouldn’t change anything.

2005share Martin Shaw is a very kind man. We

many spiritual beliefs, but most of all I love his talent. He’s known Bill Kenwright, my other half, for 40 years, so he’s part of the family. He played the maverick judge in the BBC’S Judge John Deed, which started in 2001, and I was his love interest and ally Jo Mills QC [both pictured]. We had great fun, but by 2007 Martin wanted to move on. Martin and I have often worked together on stage, and we’re meant to be in a production now in the West End, Love Letters.

1988 Here I am in Agatha Christie’s Appointment With Death, alongside John Gielgud and Peter Ustinov. Peter was amazing and told very funny anecdotes, but he liked an audience and he’d end up telling you the same stories... you’d still listen, though, because he was so brilliant at telling them. Lauren Bacall and Carrie Fisher were also in the cast. Lauren told me not to get involved with the film’s director Michael Winner. I went out with him for a few years, but I don’t regret it. He was like a five-year-old dressed up as a 50-year-old, wanting love and attention. He was very funny, very volatile and occasionally a bully. But there’s good and bad in everyone.

2010 I first met theatre producer Bill when I was with Michael Winner because I went to see a West End show of his. Then in 1993 he produced Present Laughter, which I was in. We were friends but he wasn’t my type. But after I left Michael, Bill and I saw more of each other and I woke up one day and said, ‘I really want to be with this man!’ The rest is history – 27 years! This is us at a premiere – I’ve been in many of Bill’s productions, but if he can get a bigger star than me he always knows to go for them.

1983 Things happened very quickly for me with acting. My screen break was the 1982 TV mini-series The Woman In White, then came hit British film Local Hero. I was marine researcher Marina [pictured], a mystical character. The sea was so cold we had to redo one scene because I turned blue. I loved working with Peter Capaldi, and had no idea he’d do what he’s done since. I didn’t have expectations of my own career, but was pleased to be working. I did keep being put back in the box of playing the English rose, which is so boring. 1964 This was taken when I was seven, in Kuching, Malaysia. I was born in Kuala Lumpur and my dad, who ran an import-export business, had been transferred there. I was sent to a prep school in England at the age of nine. I grew up wanting to be a vet, but I was too sentimental.

But I fancied being an actress too, and I got into the Bristol Old Vic theatre school.

1995 This is me with Hayley Mills at the opening night of the play Dead Guilty, in which my character is poisoned by hers. I love Hayley. She was also in Appointment With Death, then I did a year and a half with her in this. We’d talk into the small hours about all sorts. I’d have hated to be a child star like her, I think children need a normal childhood. As an actress it’s hard getting older. You see people at my age now looking amazing, but then I think, ‘I don’t want to have a facelift.’

2018 I’ve no regrets about not having children; our dogs and the horses [pictured] at my sanctuary, Mane Chance near Guildford, fulfil my nurturing desire. I started Mane Chance in 2011 because someone I knew had rescued a lot of animals but ran out of money, so I formed a charity. I wanted to give the horses a purpose as teachers and healers. We’ve got 34 horses, and it costs £350,000 a year to run, which is so difficult to find, especially as all our fundraising events had to be cancelled because of Covid.