How you could still be doing the splits at 88
She had an affair with Errol Flynn, gave Sophia Loren lessons in being seductive and has a much younger lover. Now she wants to show YOU . . .
WELL, this is sobering. I’m taking instruction on how to move sexily by an 88year- old woman who has t wo metal hi ps a nd a f used ankle.
‘Shoulders back! Chest out, out, oUT!’ she commands. ‘You have to let the nipples lead, my darling. They have to be the first things to enter the room.’
Blimey! An audience with Dame Gillian Lynne isn’t for the faint of heart or the slouchy of gait. But you can’t quibble with her credentials. This is the woman who was once charged with sexing-up Sophia Loren, for goodness’ sake. ‘Although that wasn’t the biggest challenge of my career,’ she admits.
Now she’s moving on to the rest of us — becoming possibly the oldest person in Britain to bring out an exercise DVD, one ‘ not aimed at buttock-thrusting teenagers’.
She gets down on the floor to demonstrate what we should be aiming for. Lordy! She can still do the splits at an age when many of us have trouble lifting a teacup to our mouth.
‘Say: “Hello knee”,’ she says as she places her head on one knee. ‘ Hello knee,’ she says to the other knee. When she is upright again she teaches me a manoeuvre every woman apparently needs. It involves clasping your arms under your crotch and yanking upward. It possibly isn’t one to try on the Tube.
‘Now take your hands away,’ she says. ‘See. You immediately stand more straight. You want your core to be strong. That is very sexy.’
If you think there is something unseemly about a woman of nearly 90 offering instruction on sexiness — well, get over it. This particular Dame is undeniably, unapologetically sexy herself — all tousled hair and mischievous eyes and a body that is quite bafflingly bendy.
‘Yes, I am sexy,’ she agrees. ‘I’ve never been beautiful, ever, but I’ve always been sexy. If you lose that you might as well DIE.’
How on earth does her husband keep up with her? She dissolves into giggles.
‘He’s nearly 30 years younger than I am, my dear,’ she says. ‘That helps.’
Right from the off, it is clear that Gillie Lynne, as she insists I call her, is going to be an interviewer’s dream.
A showbiz legend, of the sort that simply don’t exist any more, she is best known for being the choreographer behind major hits such as Cats and Phantom of The opera, but she started off as a ballet dancer, sharing a stage with Dame Margot Fonteyn.
Given that her 70-year career has also taken in film direction, it’s fair to say she has worked with everyone.
When chatting to her, it is hard to keep up with what celebrity era we are in because the conversation lurches from her affair with Errol Flynn and close friendship with Sean Connery, to the time she invited an ‘adorable’ actor friend to dinner. He brought his young son, who proved to be ‘equally adorable and very intelligent.
‘ The son’s name was Benedict Cumberbatch,’ she says. ‘He’s done rather well for himself since . . .’
Her own return to the limelight began earlier this year when Dame Gillian (no, no, I can’t do the ‘Gillie’) took part in a highly-acclaimed documentary called Fabulous Fashionistas, which showcased older ladies who refused to be defined by their age.
SHE lapped up the attention — hence this fitness DVD. It’s a million miles from your average glossy exercise video, filmed at her home in France, on a rug (rather than a chi-chi yoga mat), with her in an unglamorous sweatshirt and old l eggings. ‘ I didn’t want i t to be intimidating,’ she explains. ‘So many exercise DVDs are.’ Why do we need it, though? ‘Because fitness will keep you alive,’ she says, sternly.
She says she had pneumonia last year. ‘The doctors said that if I hadn’t been in such good condition before I became ill, I would be dead now. That focuses the mind.’
An hour in her company does make you ask two things:
1) How is all t his physically possible?
2) Why has her old mate Andrew Lloyd Webber not written a musical about her life? I’ll wager there would be a stampede from young actresses to play the role, such is the joie de
vivre that oozes from her. She is what they call a trooper. There isn’t a stage in the West End — or on Broadway, for that matter — that Dame Gillian doesn’t know intimately. Come to think of it, she reckons she has fallen off quite a few of them, in highly theatrical style, of course.
‘It’s one of the perils of what I do,’ she chuckles. ‘When you’re rehearsing, you’re always standing in front of the dancers with your back to the orchestra pit. I’ve toppled right into the orchestra on a few occasions. once I chipped a bit off a rib.’
Her life reads like a script. She was born in Bromley, Kent, and her father ran a removal business. Gillian showed talent from an early age. Her mother — and heroine, even today — died in a car crash when she was 13 and was j ust beginning to shine i n her dance classes.
From that moment, she vowed to make her proud. She still wells up when talking about her mother today.
Her early career took place against the backdrop of the war. She vividly recalls dancing in Covent Garden when the sound of doodlebugs drowned out the music. on one occasion a bomb exploded in St Martin’s Lane right outside the theatre.
She could have remained cloistered in the world of classical ballet, but was always eager for new adventures.
HER film break came when she was asked to audition for the part of Errol Flynn’s lover in the 1953 movie The Master of Ballantrae, shot in Sicily.
‘They were looking for a blonde with big bosoms for the part — and since I was a brunette with baby boobs, I didn’t think I had a hope,’ she laughs. ‘But I knew, though I was not beautiful, that I was sexy.’
Her new co-star, then one of the biggest names in Hollywood, clearly agreed. She was 27, he was 44 and a notorious drinker and womaniser.
‘oh, he leapt on everything in sight,’ she says. ‘ But he was the most charismatic man I had met. of course I fell for him. It was practically impossibly not to.’
Leading men abound in her life. Sean Connery is an ‘old, old friend. We took an acting and movement class together. I remember him talking about how he had been offered this part and didn’t know whether to take it. It was James Bond.
‘ We are still in touch, which is wonderful. Every time we speak he says, “Gillie, no one but us understands what it was like in those days.” ’
Not that she lives in the past. Her attitude is marvellously youthful. She talks about sex wi t h eyewatering candour. ‘To dancers, being sexy is just like breathing. And using our bodies is just what we do.’ When she turned her hand to choreography, she was known as the woman to go to if you needed ‘sexy’. The musical Cats wouldn’t have been half as saucy, she admits, with a throaty giggle, without her.
‘I remember saying to the cast of Cats that we wanted it to be the sexiest show ever. I told them that our aim was to make people jump up from their seats, rush home and leap into bed to make love.’
She giggles about how the steaminess spilled over into real life. ‘All our sexual energy went into that show. Trevor Nunn [the director] fell in love with one of the dancers. So did the designer John Napier.’
Then there was the big theatrical
romance that blossomed ‘right under my nose’, the one between Andrew Lloyd Webber and Sarah Brightman. ‘We all saw it unfold,’ she says. ‘It was inevitable. Sarah had this peerless voice, and Andrew was smitten.’
When Cats went global, however, some countries took the sexiness too far. She says she was horrified when she watched the French version. ‘ For it to be sexy, there has to be mystery. I felt they crossed a line.’
It’s why she’s a big critic of modern-day stars who try to ooze sex appeal on stage and simply end up being tacky. Don’t even get her started on Miley Cyrus. ‘I’m appalled at that child,’ she says. ‘ It’s so misguided and tasteless. When it is all out for sale, it’s not sexy — it’s boring.’ Can sex appeal be taught, though? ‘I don’t think sex appeal can be taught. But how you use it can be developed,
most definitely.’ So it was with one of her most famous charges — La Loren.
They met on the set of Man Of La Mancha, the Don Quixote musical, in the early Seventies. Her task was to teach Loren — already one of the biggest stars in the world — how to move sexily.
‘I coached her for one month. I had a glorious apartment in Rome and she would come every day,’ she says. ‘I remember her arriving on the dot of 9am. The door would swing open and there would be Sophia, who was a complete goddess, no doubt about it.
‘ She wasn’t confident i n her body, though. At that time she was a little plump and nervous about it. I remember she had about ten sweaters on and four pairs of tights — and I knew we’d done a good job with her because by the end she was wearing a leotard and tights.’
The presence of Loren caused quite a stir among her male colleagues, she r ecalls. ‘ I had a male assistant who was cross-legged with lust [for Sophia] every day.’
Her own romantic happiness came late. She was 56 when she fell in love with actor Peter Land during a production of My Fair Lady. He was 27. Their affair was quite the scandal.
‘My friends thought it was outrageous and said it would never last — well, more fool t hem because we are stil l together.’
Dame Gillian’s attitude to the relationship is like her attitude to life: you only get out what you put in.
‘We do work at it,’ she says. ‘You have to. We still like to get dressed up for each other. Sex is important, of course it is. When that part dies, so does everything. But we are also great friends. We love to laugh.’
They never had children, despite consulting doctors. ‘Too late’, she says. ‘They said they could try to help, but I would have to stay in bed for a year. That would have killed me.’
Retirement isn’t in her vocabulary. She still fizzes with plans for new productions, new ventures.
How does she want to be remembered?
‘As someone who lived,’ she says. ‘Properly lived.’
I take my leave (“Chest out, out, OUT, my darling, remember”), vowing to do more sit-ups, and wishing that an afternoon with her was available, on the NHS, for every woman of a certain age left saggy by life.