Joanna Lumley

Joanna Lamond Lumley was born on 1 May 1946 in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, in British India. Her mother, Thyra Beatrice Rose (née Weir), was English. Her grandfather Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Weir had been born in Ghazipur and served as an army officer in Kashmir; he was a close friend of the 13th Dalai Lama.

Her father, Major James Rutherford Lumley, was born in Lahore (now part of Pakistan) with Scottish and English ancestry. He was a direct descendant of Maj.-Gen. Sir James Rutherford Lumley and himself served as an officer in the British Indian Army's 6th Queen Elizabeth's Own Gurkha Rifles in Burma during World War II, most notably at the Battle of Mogaung. His life was saved by Tul Bahadur Pun. Maj.-Gen. Sir James Rutherford Lumley was a direct descendant of Joan Beaufort, Queen of Scots.

Joanna Lumley's parents married in 1941. She has early memories of living in the tropics.

The family went "home" on leave to England, travelling on the HMT Empire Windrush. When her parents returned to Asia, she stayed, boarding at Mickledene School in Rolvenden, Kent. She was eight years old, which she later described as "paralysingly young". From 11 to 17 she attended Holmhurst St Mary's Convent School, the Ridge, run by Community of the Holy Family:

"I especially loved my second boarding school, an Anglo-Catholic convent in the hills behind Hastings. The nuns wore blue stockings and were brainy and lovely. There were 70 boarders and I was happy as a clam."

Lumley attended the Lucie Clayton Finishing School in London, after being turned down by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the age of 16. Lumley spent three years as a photographic model, notably for Brian Duffy, who photographed her with her son, born in 1967. That year she also appeared on the BBC2 programme The Impresarios: For Appearance's Sake. She also worked as a house model for Jean Muir. Over forty years later, she participated in another photoshoot – again with her son – for Duffy as part of a retrospective of the photographer's work.

Lumley appeared in an early episode of the Bruce Forsyth Show in 1966. She appeared in a British television advertisement for Nimble Bread first screened in 1969.

Lumley did not receive any formal training at drama school. Her acting career began in 1969 with a small, uncredited role in the film Some Girls Do, and as a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, in which she had two lines as the English girl among the villainous Ernst Stavro Blofeld's "Angels of Death". Lumley went on to have a brief but memorable role as Elaine Perkins in Coronation Street, in which her character turned down Ken Barlow's offer of marriage, as well as roles in other popular television series such as Are You Being Served?, Steptoe and Son and The Protectors. In 1973, she made another big screen appearance as Jessica Van Helsing in The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the last Hammer Dracula film to star Christopher Lee. She also had a role in the comedy film Don't Just Lie There, Say Something! (1974) alongside Leslie Phillips and Joan Sims.