Dame Joanna Lumley has delivered a moving reflection on ageing, mortality, and the gift of being alive — at 79, the Absolutely Fabulous icon says she feels the ticking clock louder than ever, and it’s precisely that awareness that fuels her zest for life.
“As you near the top of the hill you suddenly think, ‘Gosh, there’s not all that amount of time left’,” she admitted in a recent interview. “All kinds of my beloved friends are beginning to leave. My time must be coming quite soon and I don’t want to have wasted a minute of being on this beautiful planet.”
The actress and comedian, famed for her elegance and wit, has not slowed down. In the past year alone, she’s starred in the BBC’s Amandaland, appeared in Netflix’s Fool Me Once, and embarked on an epic journey for her ITV travelogue tracing the River Danube’s 1,770-mile stretch.
Yet Lumley also shared that her journey has not been without personal challenges. She has long lived with prosopagnosia — a condition more commonly known as “face blindness” — which significantly impacts her ability to recognise faces.
“I’ve got this weird thing with faces… I always say, ‘Please tell me who’s going to be there’, then I can match the name to the thing,” she told BBC 2. Despite encountering people daily in her line of work, she explained, “it’s not to do with that — it’s completely different.”
The NHS notes that prosopagnosia can affect more than just facial recognition, extending to recognising gender, age, and even familiar objects. While there is no cure, those with the condition often rely on other features like voice or hairstyle to identify people.
But Lumley refuses to let the condition define her. Her impressive career spans from The New Avengers, Sapphire & Steel, and Absolutely Fabulous, to her recent work in Finding Alice and Motherland. On film, she even appeared alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Beyond her career, Lumley enjoys a long-standing marriage with conductor Stephen Barlow and treasures her role as a mother to Jamie, 57, and grandmother to Alice, 22, and Emily, 21.
Her secret to embracing the present? Knowing that nothing lasts forever.
