PRESS UPDATE : MAIL WEEKEND MAGAZINE ... MAY 30TH 2026 ..

 

The Cannes Film Fest­ival was treated to a dash of old-school Hol­ly­wood glam­our earlier this month when Dame Joan swept in to the open­ing cere­mony look­ing stun­ning in a white cou­ture gown and diamonds and accom­pan­ied by dash­ing French actor Laurent Lafitte. So it’s a sur­prise to dis­cover that Dame Joan, a true Tin­seltown legend for the past 70 years, can often be found ambling around the aisles of a super­mar­ket dis­guised in an anorak and base­ball cap, doing her weekly food shop.

One chap found out to his cost recently when he bumped into her with his trol­ley in M&S, leav­ing Joan   fum­ing and her devoted hus­band Percy Gib­son spring­ing to her defence. ‘Fire came out of his eyes!’ exclaims Joan, ‘And I said, “No, no, no, no, don’t darling! It’s fine, I’m not hurt.” I was, actu­ally! Only slightly. You don’t like to be bumped with a trol­ley!’

Joan has con­cluded that we Brits are no longer as polite as we were. She com­plains that ‘cyc­lists ride on the pave­ments in Lon­don now’ and sev­eral of her friends have had close calls with them. ‘My grand­chil­dren and my neph­ews and nieces are all very polite and well-mannered, but I’ve seen some young people who are not. I’ve seen some old people who are not too, like the man who bumped into me: he was in his late 60s. I think there’s a cul­ture: Great Bri­tain used to be known for every­body being incred­ibly polite and well-mannered. I don’t think we’re as polite now. We’re not known for our politesse as much as people in Spain and Italy, for example.’

Joan on the Cannes Red Carpet 

Today over lunch at an exclus­ive Lon­don hotel, the act­ress looks none the worse for her encounter with a shop­ping cart, under a wide brimmed white hat, her dazzling eyes still have that twinkle in them....

‘This is my face, my ori­ginal face, and it’s got lines and fur­rows and things,’ she says. ‘I don’t do any tweaks. Noth­ing. I would never use Moun­jaro or any of those weight-loss shots because to me that’s put­ting poison in your body. I mean, it was bad enough hav­ing to take the Covid jab, which I didn’t want to do!’

What’s her opin­ion of women who use Botox and fillers? ‘It’s a fad, isn’t it? I think, “Why?” Youth is wasted on the young! You see a beau­ti­ful 25-year-old who wants to change her face – I find it really sad. And of course, as you get older it’s going to look worse and worse. I like people who look the way they are. And I do not like the trout pout.’

Would she ever go for a tat­too? An anchor on her arm per­haps, like Popeye? Or ‘Percy For Ever’?

‘No,’ says Joan firmly. “Some­body once said that put­ting a tat­too on a body is like put­ting a sticker on a Fer­rari.’

She looks as glam­or­ous as you’d expect today in a jacket by Veron­ica Beard over a Karl Lager­feld sweater. ‘Glam­or­ous from the waist up only, darling!’ she smiles. ‘I’m wear­ing workout trousers and rub­ber shoes.’ Well, she is a work­ing woman. Her latest project is a new who­dun­nit, A Murder Between Friends, in which she plays ‘sharp and sassy show­biz sleuth’ Francesca Carlyle, presenter of a true-crime TV show.

Francesca has a home near a castle where a group of couples in their thirties are spend­ing a boozy week­end – until murder ensues. The movie was shot out­side Prague, says Joan, who is also one of the pro­du­cers. It was writ­ten for her by her friend Mark Razzano and the cast includes Toby-alex­an­der Smith, who played Gray Atkins in East­enders. ‘Every­body who sees it really enjoys it because there are scary things in it, which I think audi­ences want to see,’ says Joan. ‘But it’s not too blood-curd­ling. There is some inter­est­ing sex! And there are some very good twists and turns.’

Joan as Francesca Carlyle in Murder Between Friends

Unlike her Ms Carlyle, Joan is not a fan of true-crime stor­ies. ‘I don’t want to see stor­ies about real people who’ve suffered. I love those Agatha Christie films like The Mir­ror Crack’d, the one with Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak in 1980 – which I’d like to have been in! They put Kim Novak in instead! I like Angela Lans­bury and Dex­ter. I loved Starsky And Hutch! I was so thrilled when I was asked to be in it.’  Would she have made a good detect­ive in real life? ‘It’s amaz­ing you’ve asked me that ques­tion! When I was a kid I used to listen to Dick Bar­ton: Spe­cial Agent on the radio. I was glued to it every night. I said, “Mummy, I’m going to be a detect­ive.” She said, “I thought you wanted to be an act­ress?” I said, “Well, an act­ress and a detect­ive.” She said, “I don’t think that’s pos­sible.”

‘For Christ­mas they gave me a detect­ive set. It had spe­cial powder for tak­ing fin­ger­prints, a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, a note­book and hand­cuffs. And I put the powder around to see if my younger sis­ter Jackie had been going into my private closet.’ And had she? ‘Yes! She was about eight, I was 11 or 12.’

Best­selling author Jackie died in 2015 at the age of 77. Joan says she still misses her sis­ter and raised a glass to her at a recent din­ner atten­ded by many of her fam­ily, which includes three chil­dren and four grand­chil­dren, not to men­tion an army of god­chil­dren, who range in age from one to 51. The younger mem­bers of the fam­ily call Joan ‘DJ’. Is that because she’s a whizz on the turntables? ‘No! It’s for Dame Joan.’ Is that what Percy calls her? ‘Percy has his pet name for me but I’m not going to tell you what it is. You have to have a cer­tain amount of mys­tery, darling!’

Percy is 60, more than 30 years Joan's junior. Some wondered about the age gap when he became the act­ress’s fifth hus­band in 2002. ‘We’re com­ing up for our 25th wed­ding anniversary – can you believe it, our sil­ver wed­ding anniversary! And I’m already plan­ning it.’

They got to know each other when Joan was appear­ing in a play in the United States that Percy pro­duced. ‘We found out we had so much in com­mon. We both loved musical theatre and hated sports! We loved read­ing. We just loved the same things and we were on the same wavelength. And he’s the kind­est, nicest, sweetest, most caring man. But that doesn’t mean he’s a wimp,’ adds Joan, cit­ing her hus­band’s role in the trol­ley incid­ent.

‘Percy and I are very much home­bod­ies. We stay home and we have massive TV screens, includ­ing one in the bed­room.’ They go out to see friends, attend events linked to the char­it­ies Joan sup­ports, and watch films. They have tick­ets for the new Michael Jack­son biopic, Michael.

‘I liked Michael: every time I met him he’d come up to me and say, “Hello, do you know who I am? My name’s Michael,”’ says Joan, in a very pass­able impres­sion of the King of Pop. ‘And I’d say, “I know who you are, I’ve met you three times before!” The first time was when he came to the set of Dyn­asty with his sis­ter. He said, “I’m such a huge fan!” After that I met him sev­eral times at dif­fer­ent places. The last time was at the Royal Albert Hall. We were doing a trib­ute to Eliza­beth Taylor and we were all on stage together singing.’

The young Joan used to write to the stars of the time in the hope of a signed photo – and she’s with­er­ing about (unnamed) celebrit­ies who she says don’t sign their own auto­graphs. She went on to encounter many of the biggest names in show­busi­ness dur­ing her long career. Gene Kelly, star of Singin’ In The Rain, once told her never to do her own stunts ‘because it puts a stunt girl out of work’.

‘Dur­ing the golden age of Hol­ly­wood, which I came into at the end, there was an agent called Sue Mengers. And she would have parties with every­one there – James Stew­art, Eliza­beth Taylor, Ryan O’Neal, Dud­ley Moore and Woody Allen. I saw Woody once as he was leav­ing and I said I’ve got to meet him because I’m a bit of a fan. So he’s just about to go out of the door and I’m wear­ing this very low-cut dress. “Mr Allen, Mr Allen, I just have to tell you how much I adore your work, it’s so won­der­ful.” He said, “Well thank you very much. But I’ve got to get out of here, I’m very, very shy.” I said, “Well actu­ally, I’m shy too.” And he looked at my cleav­age and said, “Well, you could have fooled me.”’

The actor Rupert Ever­ett wrote in a recent mem­oir that he stood up a group of Hol­ly­wood pro­du­cers one night because he wanted to have din­ner with Joan instead. ‘Oh I think that’s one of the stor­ies Rupert makes up!’ she laughs. ‘Like Julian Clary made up his story that he saved me from drown­ing in the South of France. He’s said it so many times! I said, “Julian, this is not true!” He said, “Well I know, but isn’t it a great story? You were in the swim­ming pool try­ing to get out of one of those rub­ber chairs and I helped you.” I said, “Yes, but I wasn’t drown­ing!”’

How much time do Joan and Percy spend at their five-bed­room villa in St Tropez? ‘Well, thanks to Mr Mac­ron I can only spend 90 days there! And that’s for the whole of Europe! So if I go to Paris for the week­end, which I haven’t done since before Covid, I’m allowed 90 days, that’s it. And we have tons of friends who want to come and stay. I some­times say that place is like a hotel, because I have this big board with who’s com­ing when: “Tara (Joan's daugh­ter) is com­ing then, Big­gins is com­ing then...” Chris­topher Big­gins is one of my best pals.’

Will Joan say how she voted in the recent local elec­tions? ‘No, but I’m sure you can guess! I don’t believe in act­ors get­ting on their podium and talk­ing about polit­ics. I have strong views about polit­ics but I don’t share them because I don’t think it’s right.’ News junkie Joan says her favour­ite news chan­nel is GB News, which includes Reform politi­cians among its presenters, so that might give us a clue.

She takes care of her­self by eat­ing well, doing Pil­ates and dan­cing. ‘I star­ted dan­cing when I was three and I have a the­ory: use it or lose it. When I’m sick, like when I have the flu, and don’t do any­thing for a week or ten days, I’m really creaky. So I like to go back and exer­cise everything, even my hands and my eyes.’

With that she fixes her gaze on the far side of the din­ing room. ‘You look at something in the dis­tance and con­cen­trate on it for ten seconds; then you con­cen­trate on something close to you. You do that three times and then you swing your eyes around: left, right, left, right!’

So could she still strut her stuff on Strictly? ‘No! I was asked ten years ago. My friend George Hamilton did it in Amer­ica. He said whatever you do, don’t do it – you have to be a con­tor­tion­ist! Nobody over 40 should do it because if you fall and you break something, you’re sc **** d! But I love watch­ing it! My daugh­ter Katy and I watch it every single week.

‘I tell you what I would like to have been in – Down­ton Abbey! I’d like to have played the mother of Lady Grantham, who’s mar­ried to Hugh Bon­neville’s char­ac­ter.’ That would have meant her appear­ing oppos­ite Dame Mag­gie Smith. ‘I loved Mag­gie Smith! Wouldn’t that have been fun!’ laughs Dame Joan.

A Murder Between Friends will be avail­able on digital (includ­ing Amazon, Apple TV, Sky Store) from 15 June (Plaion Pic­tures).