Smash hit

“It was a very close relationship with O’Toole, intensely romantic. That’s what never gets mentioned. People say, ‘How terrible! How could you cope?’ But it wasn’t like that. People get it wrong, and I’ve never quite been able to convey what it was like.”

In 1976, Phillips gave one of her most compelling and visually striking performances, playing Livia alongside Derek Jacobi in the BBC’s I, Claudius. This role, perhaps, gave her enough prominence to see it was time she became her own woman. One of the big showbiz marriages of the 1960s and 1970s ended. “By the end of the 1970s, I had a separate career and, er ... I don’t know why, I just felt I had to strike out. I’m not sure why ... I don ’t know. I, Claudius? Well, I’ve always played interesting parts, some better than others. I can’t say any one has ever changed my life. I just go from job to job.”

In the 1980s, going from job to job took a bizarre turn when she found herself in musicals. First there was Pal Joey, then Gigi — “It was all rather late in life.” This musical phase had a distinctly bizarre climax. In February 1975, both Phillips and I saw an extraordinary show at, of all places, Wimbledon Theatre, by Marlene Dietrich. She was 73, could barely sing or walk and, of course, was given a hysterical reception. I remember her clinging to the burgundy velvet as she took her curtain calls. Phillips had no particular interest in Dietrich, but her companion made her stand near the stage door in the pouring rain and watch. “The rain was coming down, and she was sitting on top of a car doing autographs in the rain, in Wimbledon. It was amazing.”

Years later, having been told she looked and sounded like Dietrich, she asked Pam Gems to write her a show. And so, in the 1990s, Phillips became, for a time, Dietrich, winning awards in London and New York. It was all to do, I suppose, with the natural hauteur, the fine but slightly gruff voice, the air of distant wonderfulness. Whatever. In retrospect, Phillips was always Dietrich.

Now she is Miss Havisham, and back at the RSC. She couldn’t have done it four or five years ago — “I wouldn’t have wanted to go back” — but now she’s ready. The part is a strange challenge, heavily freighted with history.

“I don’t know what I shall do with it. It’s a character that people project things onto, but I can’t afford to get neurotic. It embodies the child’s fear of older people, that sinister thing in fairy tales. And she is a massive sulk, a cosmic sulk ... And she’s a liar, yes, she allows Pip to believe something that isn’t true, but, my God, does she get her comeuppance! Yes, I do catch fire, but they haven’t told me how they’ re going to do that yet. Perhaps I should have checked...”

Rain is now lashing the huge window, and it’s very dark. I ask her about growing old in the business. It is something she has always faced rather more honestly than many others.

“Well, it can be a bit of a heartbreak. This year, I was supposed to be doing The Cherry Orchard, and then I woke up one morning and thought, ‘No, she’s got to be younger.’ I was sad, everybody was saying it doesn’t matter, but that’s not true. If you work a lot, there are certain parts you miss. Then the decades come and go, and you’re not able to do it any more. The times when you could have Bernhardt playing Hamlet with a wooden leg are gone — though some people still push it a bit.”

Her biggest regret is not playing Cleopatra. She had a plan to do it with Alan Badel in the 1960s, but it never happened. But she’s likely to get plenty of chances to play whatever older parts are going. She is “in rude health”, and there is longevity in her family. Her maternal grandmother lived to 95, and would, she says, be with us still, but for a sudden decision to look for a lost lamb in a snowdrift. She just sat down in a hedge and died. “She was a religious woman and would never have killed herself, but she didn’t enjoy life any more.”

Phillips still goes back to Wales a lot. She’s even, along with Catherine Zeta Jones, Bonnie Tyler and Bryn Terfel, one of the patrons of a bizarre club called Social Welsh and Sexy, which meets in London to reassure exiles they are still Welsh. She also watches most of the soap operas, though, like me, she makes a point of never having anything to do with Emmerdale. Call it superstition, but, for both of us, an accidental glimpse of even a second or two of Emmerdale can ruin a day.

“I’ve never seen it, I don’t want to see it...”

“I know, I know. People don’t understand.”

She also wants to write, though after her autobiography, she thought she would never write another word. But she started and abandoned a novel. It was quite good, she says, but she had no idea about what was supposed to happen next. Now she vaguely aspires to write a book about cats, specifically a Burmese she once had called Barnaby.

“He had the most amazing life.”

So that’s Sian Phillips, really, a grand old lady back at the RSC after a 45-year exile, finally closing a big circle and finally becoming, if there is any justice, a grand old Dame.

Great Expectations previews at the RST, Stratford, from Friday