As she approaches 80, Dame Maureen Lipman tells of her love for Harry Styles, reveals which A lister can’t handle fame and tells why her latest role is like nothing we’ve seen before
Newlywed Dame Maureen Lipman – on the cusp of 80 – says she is now ready for a “bloody big part”. She says: “If you can hear, see and walk then the competition is getting less over 80. I mean, the British actress Thelma Ruby is 100 and is happy to take any job that comes.”
First, Dame Maureen returns to the stage in a new comedy, Allegra, about an ageing eccentric who cannot help bursting into song everywhere she goes. It starts on May 12 in Brighton – two days after her 80th birthday – before touring the UK. She says: “This play is so joyous and I am a miserable bugger. Now, you’re really going to find out if I can act or not!”
Frank and witty, Dame Maureen has diverse tastes as rich as her life story. She is a massive fan of Harry Styles. “Oh he has got it, that boy, she says. “Harry is very clever. He knows what not to do. I mean, you must not be too nice in this business. You have to strike a very careful balance, as if you are too nice, the women won’t fancy you. If you are too bad, then you won’t be able to work.
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“I have been loving the new Take That documentary on Netflix too. I know nothing about Take That, but it is just the story of someone putting a group together and by hard work, talent and joy they conquer the world and fail to cope with the isolation of fame. There is always one like John Lennon or Robbie Williams who cannot take it.”
For Dame Maureen, fame has been sewn into the tapestry of her life. She laughs: “I would describe myself as an actress, a wife, mother…serial marrier. I’m trying to catch up on Elizabeth Taylor!” She will have a way to go. While Liz married eight times, Dame Maureen married her second husband, LA Fitness co-founder David Turner, 79, last September.
Her first husband, playwright Jack Rosenthal, who she wed in 1974 and with whom she had two children, Amy and Adam, died in 2004. She also enjoyed a 13-year relationship with computer expert Guido Castro, who died in 2021. And her marriage to David was 60 years in the making.
She explains: “I first met David when he was 17. I was 16. I went into his bedroom one night [in later years] and I saw this photograph of a younger David and thought, ‘I know this man’. I asked if he went to The Green Park club in Bournemouth and he said he went every year. I thought, ‘That is when I danced with you. I wore a white dress with green flowers and you never came back for a second dance’.
“He said, ‘Well, I was waiting… and it has been 60 years.’ We met 60 years later at this lunch elderly single people go to. We were moved on like speed dating and we just chatted. We did not see each other for another five months.”
But they clicked, with Dame Maureen proposing on bended knee in the summer of 2024, as they returned to London by train from Edinburgh where they had been celebrating the Jewish festival of love, Tu B’Av.
Their wedding day, starting with a ceremony at the London home of David’s son, was full of surprises, which included travelling in the Duchess of Windsor’s vintage car, a Scrabble board-inspired cake, and the government’s emergency alert going off on everyone’s phones.
Dame Maureen recalls: “We did this Yiddish dance, which is basically a mother-in-law’s dance, where they shake fingers at each other and then they make peace.” She says: “David is very funny. It is a very conventional thing to get married, but when you meet someone and feel as if you have known them all your life, why not spend the rest of your life with that person?
“He is very religious and sincerely Jewish and knows a lot. Our kids get on and all his kids know mine. His mother’s name was Pearlman and so was mine.” Dame Maureen has taken a sabbatical from Coronation Street as her character Evelyn Plummer has gone back to university to study law.
She says: “I love Corrie but I don’t know when I am going back. They asked me at Christmas. I said, ‘I will come back, but you will have to give me a proper storyline. I am not just coming back to stand in the Rovers Return and say, ‘I’m back’. Who cares?
“It is a perfect job and I could be in it for the rest of my sane time.” Dame Maureen, whose break came in 1968 film Up the Junction – balks at suggestions acting work is scarce. She says: “You can’t crawl across the television without encountering a woman detective, woman coroner, woman policeman or a woman CID. So, feel sorry for men!
“I never had a plan. I just love being an actress.” Her next priority, before her play, is her 80th birthday. She says: “Maybe David could buy me a naughty parrot like the one Judi [Dench] has which keeps saying rude things like, ‘She’s a slag’.”
As for the future? As well as her “big part,” she says: “Maybe Netflix will make one [a documentary] about me next. It will be very dramatic.
*Allegra opens at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, May 12, before a UK tour until July. Tickets at allegraplay.com
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