Diana Quick at 80: "You earn your face"
The Brideshead Revisited star on turning 80, why she has never wanted cosmetic surgery and growing up with Mick Jagger.
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The Brideshead Revisited star on turning 80, why she has never wanted cosmetic surgery and growing up with Mick Jagger.
It’s been 45 years since Brideshead Revisited hit the small screen. And Diana Quick, who played Lady Julia Flyte in the legendary 1981 ITV miniseries, turns 80 this month, not that she can believe it. "It feels unreal; how did it creep up on me like this?" she wonders.
"Anyway, I feel very grateful to be in reasonable health and still functioning – each day is a lovely bonus." Despite Brideshead’s huge success, the cast, which also included Laurence Olivier, Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews, were "genuinely surprised it was a hit.
"We thought it would be a niche thing. We came out of the screening and stood around on the pavement asking, 'Is anyone going to watch this? Probably not'."
But audiences loved it. "The Americans went barmy for it. It confirms their idea of what it means to be British. Look at Trump’s love of the Royal Family.
"They don’t like us being a multicultural society. They want us to live in mansions and be emotionally agonised."
Diana and the cast still regularly meet and share memories, such as how she couldn’t keep a straight face while filming sex scenes with Irons, who played young Oxford student Charles Ryder. He climbed on top of Diana while wearing Harris Tweed.
She told him: "You’ll have to take the trousers off or I’ll be scratched all over!" As for the scene itself, "When we started filming, I looked up to see Jeremy bashing his head against the headboard and bellowing, and I burst out laughing."
Diana continues to get occasional royalties from the series and still has the dressing gown she wore as Lady Flyte hanging in her wardrobe.
With her gamine look and auburn bob in Brideshead, one Sunday magazine ran an image of her with the headline: ‘Is this the most beautiful woman in the world?’
Today, Diana laughs at the accolade. "My looks were nothing to do with me – just an accident of genes. In any case, if people respond to someone’s looks, it prevents them from understanding what’s going on inside that person.
"Talent lasts but looks go. You borrow that physical wholesomeness for a while but then, like everyone, you become decrepit."
She eschews the idea of plastic surgery – or ‘enhancement’, as she calls it. "A huge number of my contemporaries have had nips and tucks. My granny always used to say, 'You earn your face', and I feel like one should be allowed to look like one really is. If you start, you’ve got to do it again in another eight years or so.’
Her lack of vanity was perhaps helped along by a childhood pal who also became famous. Mick Jagger grew up with Diana in Dartford, Kent. She remembers the Rolling Stones’ singer as "too cool for school – wearing a suede jacket long before anyone else".
As adults, he teased her by saying: "You’re still the ugliest girl in school!" It was, as the actor remarks, "just to put me in my place".
After school, Diana attended Oxford University, making history as the first female president of the university’s Dramatic Society in 1966.
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