Biografia

Voiced the Cadbury's Caramel Bunny in the British adverts.

Since 1968, her partner has been Australian academic Heather Sutherland. Became an Australian citizen on 26 January 2013. She was part of the Australia Day ceremony attended by Prime Minister Julia Gillard (who was born in Wales).

Playing Madame Morrible in the London production of Wicked.

She is a huge admirer of the works of Charles Dickens and has toured the world in a one-woman show, Dickens' Women, inspired by the females in his works.

Lived and worked in the U.S. for 16 years.

I'm not the sort of woman men boast of having slept with.

As you certainly know, Queen Victoria did not believe in lesbianism. So that was why it was never a criminal offense, in the way homosexuality was, because she thought it was impossible.

I'm an actress and I am a scholar of English literature. And I never know which part of that is more important to me. I think it obviously must be the acting part because otherwise I would have become an academic, which I didn't do. But I've always had a love of English literature and particularly of Charles Dickens.

I think it's very likely that because Dickens [Charles Dickens] was able to depict - in a way that I don't think had ever been done before - people's real lives, it had an enormous response among the poor. So he was the last great artist whose work was appreciated by everybody. People at the very top and the very bottom loved Dickens. Queen Victoria asked him to come and read for her and people in the street would clap him as he went. And he very much needed that contact with real people. It mattered to him. He felt, I think, that he was a man of the people. And he was.

Nowadays people say that you must let children be what they are, but when I was growing up the parents defined the child. And my parents had a definite vision of how they wanted me to be.