FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Jacqueline Bisset
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on myself, trying to grow, improve and learn.
When are you at your happiest?
When I am sitting in the garden in California and I’m weeding and listening to the birds carrying on, I get an incredible sense of peace. And when I’m dancing with my friends – I just love to dance.
What is your greatest fear?
Being incapacitated.
What is your earliest memory?
I have some recollection of my grandfather giving my brother and me a football.
What do you most dislike about yourself?
I have a tendency to be very serious and polite with people I’m not yet comfortable with.
Who has been your greatest influence?
A Russian lady called Packly Bîcat, who was the mother of three young friends in my first school when I was six. She was the most embracing human being I met.
What is your most treasured possession?
My curiosity. What trait do you most deplore in others? Cruelty. Conscious or unconscious.
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
Well, it changes yearly; the list is getting very long.
What is your favourite book?
Anna Karenina.
What is your favourite film?
I have two favourite films, Brief Encounter by David Lean and the recent film called Amour by Michael Haneke.
Clockwise from left: Brief Encounter’s Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, Luther star Idris Elba, the glories of cheese and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
What is your favourite piece of music?
I love the excitement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Night On Bare Mountain.
What is your favourite meal?
Perfect scrambled eggs, prosciutto, a glass of good red wine, bread, wonderful cheese, and a peach. Everything has to be absolutely perfect.
Who would you most like to come to dinner?
Albert Schweitzer, Idris Elba, and Barbara Steele.
What is the nastiest thing anyone has ever said to you?
I choose not to say. I choose not to go backwards.
Do you believe in aliens?
I think I do on some level. For sure there’s something else far from us.
What is your secret vice?
Well, it wouldn’t be a secret any more if I told you.
Do you write thank-you notes?
I do for dinners; I don’t always remember to do it for gifts.
Which phrase do you most overuse?
‘What?’
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
I have a fantasy about living in one place rather than being split between the US and Europe. But I don’t know where, that’s the query.
Tell us one thing people might not know about you.
I’ve been in this business for so long and I talk so much in interviews that maybe there’s very little that people don’t know about me – but my feeling is that people don’t know me well at all. Probably how normal I am, I think.
What would you like your epitaph to read?
‘She was an amazing friend’.
Jacqueline Bisset stars in Miss You Already, in cinemas now.
I’m working on myself, trying to grow, improve and learn.
When are you at your happiest?
When I am sitting in the garden in California and I’m weeding and listening to the birds carrying on, I get an incredible sense of peace. And when I’m dancing with my friends – I just love to dance.
What is your greatest fear?
Being incapacitated.
What is your earliest memory?
I have some recollection of my grandfather giving my brother and me a football.
What do you most dislike about yourself?
I have a tendency to be very serious and polite with people I’m not yet comfortable with.
Who has been your greatest influence?
A Russian lady called Packly Bîcat, who was the mother of three young friends in my first school when I was six. She was the most embracing human being I met.
What is your most treasured possession?
My curiosity. What trait do you most deplore in others? Cruelty. Conscious or unconscious.
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
Well, it changes yearly; the list is getting very long.
What is your favourite book?
Anna Karenina.
What is your favourite film?
I have two favourite films, Brief Encounter by David Lean and the recent film called Amour by Michael Haneke.
Clockwise from left: Brief Encounter’s Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, Luther star Idris Elba, the glories of cheese and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.What is your favourite piece of music?
I love the excitement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Night On Bare Mountain.
What is your favourite meal?
Perfect scrambled eggs, prosciutto, a glass of good red wine, bread, wonderful cheese, and a peach. Everything has to be absolutely perfect.
Who would you most like to come to dinner?
Albert Schweitzer, Idris Elba, and Barbara Steele.
What is the nastiest thing anyone has ever said to you?
I choose not to say. I choose not to go backwards.
Do you believe in aliens?
I think I do on some level. For sure there’s something else far from us.
What is your secret vice?
Well, it wouldn’t be a secret any more if I told you.
Do you write thank-you notes?
I do for dinners; I don’t always remember to do it for gifts.
Which phrase do you most overuse?
‘What?’
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
I have a fantasy about living in one place rather than being split between the US and Europe. But I don’t know where, that’s the query.
Tell us one thing people might not know about you.
I’ve been in this business for so long and I talk so much in interviews that maybe there’s very little that people don’t know about me – but my feeling is that people don’t know me well at all. Probably how normal I am, I think.
What would you like your epitaph to read?
‘She was an amazing friend’.
Jacqueline Bisset stars in Miss You Already, in cinemas now.