Dame Joanna Lumley DBE

Joanna Lumley is one of Britain’s favourite actresses. Her early films include On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and two Pink Panther comedies. She made early television appearances on General Hospital and Coronation Street, before becoming immortalised as Purdy in The New Avengers.

However it was Joanna’s BAFTA award-winning role as the chain-smoking Patsy in the award-winning Absolutely Fabulous which brought her renewed fame: the series proving itself one of the classic sitcoms of British television. She later appeared in Jam and Jerusalem, penned by French and Saunders.

Since Ab Fab Joanna has also acted in Class Act, Cold Comfort Farm and Sensitive Skin. She played the over-the-hill star of a daytime TV hospital drama in Dr Willoughby and was nominated for a Best Actress BAFTA for her role in A Rather English Marriage. She also worked with Martin Scorsese in his acclaimed The Wolf of Wall Street, Paddington 2, and played The Queen in the adaptation of David Walliams’ Gangsta Granny.

In her autobiography No Room for Secrets, Joanna reveal the aspects of her life that she has never talked about publicly before including people, memories, journeys, regrets, beliefs, life as a model in the 1960s, success, failure, and survival.

Joanna is known for her support for Gurkhas, the exiled Tibetan people and government, the Kondha indigenous people of India, and the Prospect Burma charity which offers grants to Burmese students. She became the public face of a campaign to provide all Gurkha veterans who served in the British Army before 1997 the right to settle in Britain.

In the documentary In the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon, Joanna charted the journey her grandparents made in the little-known country of Bhutan, and in the BBC special Girl Friday she tried her hand at surviving on a desert island – and wrote an accompanying book about her experiences. In Silk Road Adventures, Joanna went on a journey of exploration along the historic Silk Road route, travelling from Venice to the border of China. Her other shows include Joanna Lumley's Nile, where she journeyed up the River Nile from sea to source in Rwanda, and Trans-Siberian Adventure, which saw Joanna travel from Hong Kong to Moscow along the Trans-Siberian Railway.