Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1995 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My causeway this week is an actress. Her image of the cool, confident and intelligent woman belies the fact that her success has come

comparatively late in life. She was born in Grimsby where her parents ran a hotel. She eventually

went to drama school, but acting did not bring her recognition until she was cast as the lawyer Philider Trant in Rumpole of the Bailey.

Since then, her television roles as Diana Cooper in Edward and Mrs Simpson, Jemima Shaw, the amateur sloth, and the

Famfatal in the life and loves of a she-devil have made her one of this country's most popular

actresses. Late success has been accompanied by late motherhood. She had her first child

when she was 42, followed by another three years later. She is Patricia Hodge.

Tell me Patricia about this cool, slightly haughty image you have.

How much is it you and how much is it simply the roles you're cast in?

Well I hope it's the type of roles I'm cast in because I've never seen myself that way and the more that I'm described as it,

the more that it makes me laugh.

So you're not like that, you're not cool?

I think what I am is along with most other people absolutely terrified most of the time

and we all have different ways of covering that up and in my case I suppose because everybody has their

own sort of inner rhythm and way of presenting themselves to the world and I think that I go into a sort of glacial shell and

Apparently look as if I know what I'm doing when I don't at all

There's another theme isn't there you've played an awful lot of look as if I know what I'm doing when I don't at all.

There's another theme, isn't there?

You've played an awful lot of 30s women.

You played in the Mitford girls.

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