Britt Ekland on #MeToo, her famous leading men and working after 50

It used to be hard to be a woman… now it’s very hard to be a man… Britt Ekland’s first acting job was walking around in fishnets and high heels, but back then, she says, you did have to do things you didn’t want to

Britt Ekland has led an extraordinary life with an array of husbands and lovers who include Peter Sellers, Rod Stewart, Warren Beatty and the Queen’s cousin, Lord Lichfield.

She has been a Bond Girl opposite Roger Moore in The Man With The Golden Gun, starred in the 1973 cult classic The Wicker Man, appeared with Michael Caine in Get Carter and had two classic rock songs written about her: Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s The Night and You’re In My Heart. She’s been offered fur coats, diamonds and many an indecent proposal, which is why, now in the office of a London rehearsal studio, her hand is gently creeping up my thigh as she illustrates how things used to be when she was a beautiful actress from Sweden in the early Sixties.

Britt Ekland posing for the camera in 1971, the year she appeared in Get Carter alongside Michael Caine. ‘Michael Caine was a friend through Peter [Sellers] and lovely’

‘That sort of thing wasn’t just normal,’ she says, withdrawing her hand with a smile. ‘It was pretty much what you expected when you went along for a job with a director or a producer. It was rampant. And girls just went with it. You smiled politely and, yes, you did have to do things you didn’t want to do, but show me an actress of my age who hasn’t had that experience. It was a very different time. I think it’s amazing these #MeToo girls can get up and scream and shout and everyone will listen.

‘But when I started out it wasn’t so easy for women, especially if you wanted to work and get on. My first job as an actress on the stage in Sweden involved me walking around for hours every day wearing just fishnets, high heels and a swimming costume. I would have been maybe 18 or 19 years old and I thought I was lucky. Times have changed but it was how we grew up. At school when you started wearing a bra, the boy sitting behind you in the class would flick it undone and everyone would laugh. Now that boy would be in serious trouble. But back then it was hard to be a woman.’ She leans forward and smiles. ‘And nowadays it’s very hard to be a man.’

Ekland with then husband Peter Sellers in 1964. They divorced in 1968 on the grounds of cruelty

Directors aside, she rarely had problems with her leading men. ‘Michael Caine was a friend through Peter [Sellers] and lovely, and Roger Moore was totally joyous to be around. He was a gentleman, he was funny, he was charming and he had the most wonderful manners. We remained friends until he died. But actors were never the problem. I never got jumped on. I never got put in an awkward position. There were moments I hated – I hated everything about working on The Wicker Man. I know it is a cult movie now but at the time it was all about running around topless in the cold. I was pregnant [with Nic, her son from her relationship with record producer Lou Adler] and they used a body double for my bottom because I didn’t want to expose my behind as well. I did it because I needed the money.’

Ekland is a straight shooter. At 77, she remains an extremely attractive woman. Her blonde hair is as immaculate as her make-up, her jewellery is understated, as is the oversized grey cashmere jumper. But the slim, long legs are encased in leather-look jeans, definitely a reminder of her sex symbol days. She shakes her head. ‘No sex. No sex symbol. I have not been in a relationship for 20 years and the only one allowed in my bed is my dog, Bowie [a cute little stray who is sitting on her lap], that’s it. I don’t need a relationship. I don’t want a relationship. I like my life. I like to work. I like to talk. I love to give advice.’

Britt Ekland in Los Angeles in 1975 with Rod Stewart, the only ex with whom she has parted on bad terms

What advice does Ekland give? ‘Well, when I talk to young actresses I always tell them they must be independent and to look after themselves. You can work after 50 for as long as you worked before 50 if you take care of yourself and keep pushing. All women need to know this so they never give up.’

In April, Ekland returns to the British stage as sinister housekeeper Mrs Pleasant in a touring adaptation of black comedy The Cat And The Canary. The play – which also stars former Minder actor Gary Webster, Coronation Street’s Tracy Shaw and Evita’s Marti Webb – is a challenge. ‘I’ve done lots of panto but I haven’t done stage work here for almost seven years,’ she says. ‘But I like to challenge myself. In 2018 she became the oldest person in Europe to take to the floor as a contestant in Sweden’s version of Strictly Come Dancing. ‘I was 75 and I loved it,’ she says.

There are women who describe beauty as a curse because it is harder to get older and see those looks fade. She raises her eyebrows. ‘Not me,’ she says. ‘I take care of the way I look. I am strict with myself. I look at photos of when I was younger and sometimes I think: Wow, was that me? Did I really look like that? But at the time I didn’t think about it.

‘When I arrived in Hollywood at 19 I was told to pin my ears back, get my teeth filed down and was given diet pills by the movie company. I took them because I did what I was told, but my legs got these huge red patches all over them so I stopped.’

She met the legendary comedian Peter Sellers in 1964 in London when she was making a movie with Richard Attenborough as part of a seven-year deal she had with 20th Century Fox. He asked her to go to Los Angeles, where he was working. All she had to do was arrive at the airport with her passport. He picked her up and within ten days they were married. Sellers – 17 years her senior – refused to let her out of his sight so she never returned to the London movie set. She was sued and lost her deal. She cannot explain why she allowed him to completely control her. ‘I was well brought up, well-educated but it was an era where you obeyed your father, you obeyed men. I had three brothers and my father always warned me about how bad men could be. When he died I discovered he had had many affairs during his marriage to my mother so my dad was warning me about men like him.’

She does not regret her marriage to Sellers, who is the father of the eldest of her three children and only daughter, Victoria, 54. ‘Regret makes you bitter,’ she says. ‘And bitter people look ugly.’ She pauses. ‘Sellers had mental issues, which would have been treated today, but we had fun moments too – I prefer to think of those.’

She has recently been watching episodes of The Crown to remind her of the days in the Sixties she spent socialising with the Queen, Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon and the man who became her lover, Lord Lichfield. ‘They were amazing moments. I saw less of the Queen but I loved PM [Princess Margaret]. She loved to sit and stroke my hair and she was a very fun lady to be around. I loved Snowdon too. He was very smart, very much his own man. And I wasn’t just some silly girl. I was educated, I had manners, I could speak four languages and sight-read music.’

Ekland is philosophical about ageing. ‘I take care of the way I look. I am strict with myself. I look at photos of when I was younger and sometimes I think: Wow, was that me?’

Her marriage to Sellers lasted four years. She then dated Lichfield but ‘I didn’t want to be a lady living in a castle worrying about money to keep everything going’. Her next relationship, with Rod Stewart, started with an introduction from Joan Collins in 1975 and ended three years later when he cheated on her with Alana Hamilton. Her face freezes briefly at the mention of Stewart. He is the only ‘ex’ with whom she parted on bad terms.

I ask why she always seemed to put men before her career. She shrugs. ‘But I always worked. I paid my way. I was never a kept woman. Sellers gave me a Harrods card but I never used it for anything other than essentials. People thought he bought me Chanel suits but I bought copies of Chanels with my own money.’

And Stewart? ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘I had to pay $100 a month board and lodgings when I was living with him. I would go shopping with him and watch him buy clothes from Yves Saint Laurent but nothing for me. He did used to like to wear my underwear though. He would wear these baggy satin trousers and needed little satin pants. Rod would wear my knickers. He liked them.’

There is something intrinsically Swedish about Ekland’s openness. Warren Beatty was, she says, ‘Just sex and that wore out after about a month. She married Stray Cats musician Slim Jim Phantom in 1984 when she was 42 and he was 23, though their union only lasted eight years and she gave birth to her third child, TJ (Thomas Jefferson), who is now 31. ‘I left when I was 50 because it didn’t feel right any longer,’ she says. ‘But we are still close, still friends.’

She is fascinating to talk to. She doesn’t like the word ‘feminist’ but she is very much a woman’s woman. She has a tattoo of roses across her stomach and on her right inner arm an inking of her beloved chihuahua Tequila, which died three years ago. She has homes in Sweden and London and regularly visits LA where her children live. Five years ago they all appeared together in a Swedish reality show called The Eklands. ‘We no longer do it because we are always in different places,’ she says. ‘As a family we are friends. My two eldest work together in a vegan food business but they haven’t yet persuaded me to be a vegan. Not happening.’

Ekland is a survivor. She so easily could have ended up a casualty of drink or drugs. ‘Are you serious? Have you seen what alcohol does to the face and body? I could never have gone down that route because I have always been too vain.’

It’s hard not to talk about the glamour in her life but Ekland will always come back to the subject of her family. Her mother, Mae-Britt, died in 1994 after suffering from Alzheimer’s. ‘She was a wonderful woman. A wife, a mother, a woman who put everyone else first. I could never be the woman she was.’ But she is trying. Her daughter Victoria fell off the rails in her 20s and went to jail, addicted to drink and drugs as a consequence of being involved with the notorious Hollywood madam, Heidi Fleiss. ‘That was many, many years ago,’ Ekland says. ‘She’s had her life back together for decades and she’s a great girl.’

But Ekland has something else on her mind. She shows me a photo of her two-and-a-half year old grandson, Lucas (by son Nic), who has Adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD, a deadly genetic brain disease. As a newborn he was screened for ALD and at three months he was diagnosed with it.

‘As awful as this is – because you can die young from this disease – it means he is constantly monitored and when lesions begin to grow on his brain, doctors will be ready to start a bone marrow transplant. My son didn’t tell me at first because they needed to get their heads around it, but now I know about it I’m doing everything I can to help. In the UK, there is no possibility of having these screenings. A petition to add ALD to newborn screenings failed last year, so I have become patron of Alex TLC, which is fighting to have them in this country. If a child is found to have this disease it is possible to intervene with treatment and save lives. How can I, as Lucas’s grandmother, not do everything I possibly can to try and make this happen?’

She looks at me. ‘You see, there is more to me than my part and I want to make a difference to the future. That’s the real story. And I want to make it happen.’ 

Britt Ekland stars in ‘The Cat And The Canary’ on tour until June 6. kenwright.com

 

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