My first real boyfriend was Robbie Tate. Blond, blue-eyed and gorgeous, we met when we were both 15 and I was immediately smitten. We started seeing each other as much as we could and I would often skip drama or ballet classes to be with him. When my mother found out, she did her best to stop the romance, telling me that I mustn’t see him because classes were more important. Of course that only encouraged me all the more: seeing Robbie in secret was even more fun, although I didn’t dare miss too many classes. He would wait for me outside class and we’d go for a walk, then stop for a kiss and a cuddle.
I worked for several months backstage at the Nottingham Playhouse, helping out with productions and as an usherette. As well as the joy of earning £3 10s a day, I got to see the stars backstage. And there were real stars there because the artistic director was John Neville, a former leading member of London’s Old Vic, who had played many big classical roles before becoming a director. He had immense pulling power and brought a series of established actors to Nottingham, turning it into one of the finest repertory theatres in the country. Among many others, I got to meet Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, John Huston, Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston. Young and hungry for success, for me it was magical. I remember sitting on the floor in a discreet corner of the stage completely spellbound while watching Judi Dench rehearse her part as St Joan in Joan of Arc.
Our junior Theatre Club was also extremely busy, producing a stream of plays and musicals, and I was still involved with Allen Tipton’s drama group. The most successful production of Allen’s that I was in was West Side Story when I was 15. I played Anita, one of the lead roles, when we took it to London in a drama festival, where we beat dozens of other groups to win the Lawrence Olivier Shield.
Soon afterwards we took the play to the open-air Minack Theatre in Porthcurno, West Cornwall. The theatre is constructed above a gully with a rocky outcrop jutting into the sea, and it’s a truly spectacular location. We arrived in Cornwall during a hot summer and I remember getting very burnt and phoning home to tell Mum the sun had wrinkled my face so much that I looked really old, probably at least 25, and I was thrilled. Considering my later fascination with cosmetic surgery, it seems ironic that I was so desperate to look older.
All this was immense fun and the perfect backdrop for my budding romance with Robbie, which culminated when I was 16 in me losing my virginity to him in a passionate clinch on the kitchen floor of our house! You have to be 16 for that to seem romantic, but to us it was. After that we’d sleep together whenever we could, though sadly the opportunities were few and far between.
The only experience of sex that I’d had before was at a late-night party my brother had reluctantly taken me to, where a boy asked me to go upstairs with him. We went into the bathroom and he got out some sort of balloon-type thing, then fumbled around trying to undo my bra while reaching down to release the waiting wriggling worm, at which point I just thought, I don’t want that thing anywhere near me – and made a run for it!
I thought my romance with Robbie was perfect. He even gave me a ring, which I wore on my engagement finger. Then one day I walked into a bar to see him sitting on a stool, kissing a blonde girl. It wasn’t even a peck on the cheek, this was a full-on snog, and at that moment my heart broke. I stood watching them, consumed with the pain of his betrayal.
When Robbie turned and saw me, he had the gall to come over and tell me that I had imagined it. But I hadn’t, and for me the romance was over. Loyalty means a great deal to me: I’m a fiercely loyal person and I expect those I love and care about to offer the same loyalty. If I’m betrayed, that’s it: there’s no second chance, a brick wall goes up and then it’s over – I don’t even want to be friends.
From then on I barely spoke to Robbie. Deep down I still loved him, but I just couldn’t forgive him. One day, a couple of years later when I was at drama school, he turned up. He told me he missed me and asked if we could get back together again, but by that time I had met someone else and I wasn’t interested. He then asked for his ring back, but I told him I’d lost it. I’d actually sold it, for a couple of pounds, when he broke my heart. After that I didn’t see him again.
There was one other boy I went on a couple of dates with when I was 16. He worked in a shop down the road from Mum’s boutique. I used to help out in the boutique on Saturdays and he would walk past the window and stare in. Like Robbie, he was blond, blue-eyed and handsome, but I found his stare slightly unnerving and would look away or busy myself folding clothes. One day he came into the shop, introduced himself and started chatting to Mum. She liked him and invited him to tea at our house.
‘Why did you do that?’ I asked, after he’d left.
Surprised, she looked at me. ‘He seemed like a nice boy,’ she explained. ‘He’s only 19 and he’s all alone here, his family live miles away. I thought he might be missing them.’
When he came round, a few days later, he was polite and charming. So when he asked me out I said yes. However, there was something about him, an intensity with which I felt uneasy. But still bruised and suffering over Robbie, I thought it might make me feel better to go out with someone else and so we went to the theatre. After this he continued to come to our house and ask me out. Mum couldn’t understand why I didn’t take to him.
One evening he arrived and told her that he’d had to leave his lodgings and so she offered to put him up until he could find somewhere else. I was furious, but Mum told me: ‘He’s only here for a few days – you don’t have to go out with him.’
What she didn’t realise was that he would come and meet me after rehearsals and performances, telling me that she had suggested he should walk me home, just to make sure I was safe. He was pleasant enough, but somehow I still didn’t feel at ease with him. I would say, ‘I’m not your girlfriend,’ but he’d completely ignore me. Being a nice girl, I politely put up with his attentions, and this was something I would come to bitterly regret.
Chapter Four
Three years after winning the Laurence Olivier Shield, I was offered a scholarship to RADA in London. Words cannot describe how thrilled I was: it was the realisation of all my childhood dreams, but I couldn’t have done it without the support of my mother and Miss Albrecht. Mum always believed I had it in me to become a successful actress, and she kept me focused. Whenever I was reminiscing about Robbie she would say to me: ‘There are thousands of Robbies in the world but you belong on the stage.’ And when I decided that I wanted to go to drama school, she told me: ‘Then you might as well go to the best one in the world.’
As for Miss Albrecht – well, she taught me to believe in myself. She would say: ‘You’re a special girl and you’re going to be a great actress.’ So, although I wasn’t at all academic and had got nowhere at school, I didn’t feel like a failure because acting was something that seemed to come naturally to me and I loved it.
RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) was regarded as the best school in the world. Its very name commands respect and fuels ambition in young would-be actors and actresses (and I was no exception). And so my audition, in which I had to perform three pieces, was nerve-racking to say the least. I had to wait six weeks afterwards to hear whether I’d made it, and when the letter arrived, telling me that I’d got in, there was huge excitement at home. For the next few weeks life was a frenzy of packing, planning and trepidation, bearing in mind I’d never lived away from home.
For me, the only sad part was that fulfilling my dreams meant leaving my boyfriend behind. After parting from Robbie, I had fallen for a lovely boy called Arthur Moseley. He was gorgeous and looked like a cross between a very young Tony Blackburn and a young Paul McCartney so he became responsible for what became a lifelong obsession with Paul.
Arthur was a few years older than me and already ran a very successful textile business with a partner. He also had a bright yellow E-type Jaguar and used to drive me around in it, which I thought was fab, but what really mattered was that we got on so well. We had great fun and he was kind and tender. Later I came to believe he was the true love of my life, the one