THE CROWN'S IMELDA STAUNTON REVEALS WHY SHE'LL NEVER WORK WITH HOLLYWOOD STAR AGAIN

He has worked with the great and the good from Hollywood to British stage and screen legends, but there’s one person Dame Imelda Staunton, won’t be gracing with her presence again - Steven Seagal.

Not that you’d necessarily have put the 90s action man and the Queen of British screens together. So it’s something of a surprise to realise they appeared in the 2006 spy movie Shadow Man. Though it seems it will be the last time.

The veteran actress who received on a coveted Damehood in King Charles’ Birthday Honours List last week said: “I wouldn’t work with Steven Seagal again. It was a sub-James Bond in Romania and I played the US ambassador.

The film sees Seagal play a former CIA agent go in search of his missing daughter. And it seems Seagal - who denied a MeToo claim from another woman - was quite the diva.

“Before I left England the producer said ‘I just want to tell you Steven does not do reverse scenes’ which means he doesn’t do a scene unless the camera is on him,” recalled 68-year-old Imelda.

So in every shot where Imelda is speaking and you only see the back of Seagal’s head, it’s actually a “slightly cross-eyed” stand-in - while a Romanian student and set assistant read out his lines. And that was not all.

“He kept calling my character ‘Darling’ when I was supposed to be the US ambassador!,” said Imelda, who played the late Queen Elizabeth II, for the final two series of The Crown.

“It took me all my strength not to get up and say ‘This is not what I do’.”

Fortunately Dame Imelda has always found a way to stay grounded.

She recalls the time she and husband, Downton Abbey star Jim Carter, flew out for the Emmys in LA and she was staying in a posh hotel.

“A sign said ‘Do not enter this pool if you have active diarrhoea’,” she laughed, in her talk on behalf of Riverstone Living. “I was like ‘We are Emmy nominees here!’”

Normal life for the couple, who live in West Hampstead, London, is a little less Hollywood but they did manage to star together a few times over the years, including in the Downton film.

And he will be there to support her in her new role in a production of 1963 Broadway musical, Hello Dolly! at London’s Palladium.

Imelda said: “I was 26 when I met Jim and he was 34, and a year later we were married. It is lovely working together when we can.”

And after almost 50 years of her services to art and drama, she certainly deserves her damehood - with roles including Paddington, Downton Abbey, the Harry Potter movies, Vera Drake, Shakespeare In Love and most notably playing the late Queen, in the global smash Netflix series, The Crown.

Imelda, 68, says she’s “thrilled and genuinely humbled”.

But when it comes to awards, she’s the first to admit it is the applause from an audience that means the most - as well as the approval of her ever loyal, and fellow Downton Abbey star, husband Jim Carter.

She says: “We have had such a really great and fortunate career. People always ask: ‘What ambitions do you have?’ I never really had ambitions. All I ever wanted to do was work. I want to keep working. The satisfaction of the audience reaction - that is a wonderful feeling.

“Fun is second for me, work is first.”

* Hello Dolly! runs at the London Palladium from July 6.

2024-06-21T15:58:35Z dg43tfdfdgfd