She has been one of the most beautiful and successful actresses in the world for decades, but Lesley-Anne Down is finally bringing down the curtain on her career at the age of 70. She remains the star of TV shows like Dallas, Sunset Beach, The Bold and The Beautiful with its ups and downs, and movies like The Pink Panther Strikes Again, taking things up a notch.
In what could be her last on-screen appearance, Leslie-Anne plays Margaret Thatcher in Reagan, the upcoming biopic of the former US president, starring Dennis Quaid. “I’m excited for everyone involved, especially Denise, who has a very good chance of winning the Oscar,” she says.
She admits she was surprised to get the role. ‘My aim was not to be a laughing stock to begin with because I’m not Margaret Thatcher. My next aim was to make her real, because it’s easy to make fun of her as a tarnished image,’ says Lesley-Anne, who took advice from Steve Nalon, the voice of Mrs T on that show.
Leslie-Anne Down during a photo shoot at her North London home in 1972
‘I tried to embody it, not a caricature. If you mention Mrs Thatcher to young people, they’ll say, “Who?” so I wanted to please people who didn’t know who she was or that time and place. I actually rewrote my scenes because they only had information for people who really knew the story. They were grateful and did it like I did.
“I’m happy to be a part of this movie, but it’s not like it’s going to change my life or my career. From the age of 14 it was constant clothes, shoes, makeup, hair and jewelry and everything else. I don’t really work anymore because I don’t want to put myself in situations where other people tell me what to do anymore.”
She recently turned down a role in The Panic, a film her husband, American cinematographer Don Fauntleroy, is working on. “They wanted me to go to Buffalo, New York, but I thought, ‘Fuzz, that’s a lot of work!’ So I stayed home and watered the garden.”
Dressed today in a pink T-shirt, white shorts and no makeup, at the Marietta, Georgia, home she shares with Don. They moved here from Malibu four years ago, a stark contrast to her upbringing in south London with caretaker father Percy and mother Isabella.
‘Even though we were poor, we’d go to Butlin’s on holiday. Mum made me a fancy dress and I won best dressed. I won a talent show, I Just Want to Be With You, and Miss Ribena Health Photo. Other mums hated my mum because I won everything. I applied after seeing an advert in a paper that said ‘Child model wanted’. I got an agent, went from modelling to dancing and then acting, dropped out of school and never looked back.
He first appeared on screen in the 1969 film The Smashing Bird I Used to Know, and his career saw him share the screen with co-stars including Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Sean Connery, but he said he disliked acting. ‘The job was done and I got on with it, but was I comfortable? No. I wasn’t trained and I didn’t know what I was doing, I just opened my mouth and talked. Nobody hired me for my brains.’
Knowing what you do now, what would you tell your younger self if you could go back? ‘I would say, ‘Don’t be so stupid. Be strong. Don’t do what other people want you to do.’ So if you took a job, you were completely at their beck and call. I hate that. I shouldn’t have been in this industry, I should have been something else, like a missionary. I was very religious as a kid. If I could choose a different life, maybe I would. Just talking about my life, happiness, joy of living, I would have been happier not doing what I did.
She played Georgina in the 1970s television show Upstairs, Downstairs.
The actress, seen posing in New York in 1979, says she still receives “a ton of fan letters a week.”
‘I never liked to look at myself. In the old days they used to have unedited films on at lunchtime and everyone would come in and watch, but I never did, I couldn’t stand it. And I never felt beautiful, or looked in the mirror and thought.’
But a lot of men. “It wasn’t nice,” she says. “I was more than a nuisance when it came to the rich and famous. There was no protection then. I felt strong. I was always with someone, then I met someone else and moved on. A really bad, nasty man.”
She married Argentine filmmaker Enrique Gabriel in 1980, ending a ten-year relationship with Withnail and Eye author Bruce Robinson. The marriage lasted 18 months. In 1982 she married William Friedkin, the late director of The French Connection and The Exorcist. They had a son, Jack, in 1982 and divorced in 1985.
“The relationship with Bruce overtook my relationship,” she says. “Henry was beautiful but I shouldn’t have married him. I did this to completely separate myself from Bruce. William was a talented director but a crazy psychopath. A scandalous, horrible man. A demon.”
She met Don in 1984 when they were working on the hit miniseries North and South. They married in 1986 and their son George was born in 1998. “He’s a very nice person,” said Leslie-Ann, or LA, as she was known to friends when she lived in Los Angeles for 40 years. “We were very much ‘there’ for each other.”
She said she felt “very, very, very grateful” when she returned in March at age 70, in part because she had a “brutal” battle with breast cancer at age 54. “I had a double mastectomy because I wanted it, not because I needed it. They didn’t want me to get it, but I’m 1,000 percent glad I did because it greatly reduced the chances of it coming back. Of course it scared me. I remember praying a lot in the middle of the night when Don was sleeping. I prayed that George would live long enough to see him grow up.”
Six months later, finding she looked tired and unhappy, Lesley-Anne had her first facelift and to this day gets Botox three times a year and facials every three weeks. ‘I remember beautiful women find it much harder to get older than people who have never been considered super duper. I can’t say I feel that way. Getting older doesn’t affect me,’ she says. ‘I look after myself and I look happy, and if you’re happy, that’s all you can ask for.’
There is a Leslie-Anne Facebook page, which features mostly photographs of her in her prime. And she still receives “a ton a week” of fan letters from around the world. ‘I have to be honest, I don’t read it. I don’t have the energy or time, although I appreciate it and send them a picture which is usually what they want. All the nude photos I get, I tear them up and throw them away, and then send one of my face!’
Now that she has more free time, Leslie-Ann is considering writing her memoirs.
She plays Margaret Thatcher in Reagan, the upcoming biopic of the former US president
Leslie-Ann is active on X (Twitter) and often discusses the current US presidential candidates. Following the death of her North and South co-star Kirstie Alley from bowel cancer in December 2022, aged 71, Lesley-Anne defended her from online trolling. ‘Kirsty was a very powerful and political person and the left thinks about people who aren’t left-wing. Doing it to the living is bad enough, but doing it to the dead is hell.’
However, she added about Ally: “We were never really friends, even when we were doing North and South. I didn’t really have any friends in the industry. Don is a friend of mine in the industry.
Now that she has more time on her hands, Lesley-Anne is considering writing her memoirs, although the way she wants people to remember her is simple. “Being kind and making them happy that they know me.”
And as an actress? ‘I don’t give a fuck, you know!’
Reagan is coming to the big screen soon
