Hello I'm Kirstie 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 1988 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My cast away this week is an actress whose life has been a mixture of professional success and private tragedy.

The success in Hollywood and on Broadway, she appeared in many distinguished roles, including

an Oscar-winning performance opposite Paul Newman in HUD.

In private, however, she's often found her life despite five children and a long marriage to the author rolled-hour,

painful and humiliating. She suffered three near fatal strokes, but she

fought back to appear once more in public, to be once more a wife and a mother, only to find finally that her husband wanted to divorce her and to marry a close friend.

Now, age 62, she lives in America, where alone she has begun to come to terms with her bittersweet memories.

She is Patricia Neal.

Patricia, I know there's been a great deal of joy in your life too but running through it

there is this catalogue of tragedies do you feel that you've suffered more than your

fair share I sure do but I mean I can laugh about it. I've got to laugh about it because I mean if I didn't I

would have killed myself some years ago. But you know it's sad, but it happened.

The word gutsy is one that crops up time and again when one reads about you.

It's a very American word. Have you always been gutsy?

We've gutsy as a child.

I really think I have been.

I mean it's an extraordinary thing to say, but I really think I was.

Everything I wanted, I fought for, but I didn't always get it now. Let's not forget that.

Well, you'll need to be gutsy on our desert island to combat all of the problems. It's quite a pleasant tropical island though I should say.

Is it going to pose you any worries or are you looking forward to being a castaway?

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