UK
Actress
Born in Srinagar, Kashmir,
India, 1 May 1946
Joanna
Lumley's lengthy career in
television has been marked
chiefly by two components--her
image as glamorous and refined,
and the characters she has
played in three popular series,
which span three decades. Her
work over the years has been
varied, encompassing theatre,
film, and several major
advertising campaigns, as well
as television drama, comedy and
regular celebrity appearances.
Equally, her work has been of
widely varying standards,
ranging from the flimsy and
trite to award-winning
performances.
A former model in the
"swinging sixties",
Lumley landed her first major television role in The New
Avengers (1976-77), in which she played special agent Purdey
alongside Gareth Hunt (Gambit)
and Patrick Macnee (Steed). The show
evidently seemed to be more concerned to promote Lumley's
legs than her character's crime-fighting skills--not only
did her costume consist of a skin-tight trouser suit and
kinky high boots, but Purdey's
prime weapon was her immobilising
karate kick. In spite of this fetishistic fixation, Lumley
became most synonymous with the pudding-bowl haircut named after
her character, Purdey, and
widely imitated by women and
small girls alike.
Shortly after The New Avengers
came Sapphire and Steel
(1979-82), an off-beat science
fiction series in which Lumley
co-starred with David McCallum.
The two played mysterious agents
who traveled through time and
space, whilst the ethereal
Sapphire (Lumley) costumed in a
long, floaty dress communed with
psychic forces.
Although this, along with the
previous show, was popular with
both children and adults, it is
significant to note that Lumley
claimed she was becoming frustrated with
the parts she was playing, primarily as they did not mimic
real women.
For the remainder of the 1980s,
Joanna Lumley was involved in
less memorable productions,
although she remained in the
public eye as the face for
several advertisements, as a
regular guest on TV chat shows,
and with certain notable film
appearances, particularly as
headgirl-turned-prostitute in
Shirley Valentine (1989).
However, it was her performance
with Ruby Wax (on The Full Wax)
as a washed-up, drugged-out
actress, that initiated the
revival of her career. This
performance instantly
transformed her from an
idealised myth of feminine
perfection, to reveal a more
complex and humorous persona.
Shortly after revealing her
talent for comedy and
self-parody, through a stroke of pertinent
casting, Joanna Lumley became
Patsy Stone, the aging, neurotic
"Fash-Mag-Slag"
conceived of by Jennifer
Saunders for Absolutely Fabulous
(1992-95).
This casting was
central to the success of
Absolutely Fabulous and equally
to the renaissance of Lumley's
career. Lumley gives an
immensely entertaining
performance, but also, because
of her on and off-screen
persona, she creates in Patsy a
hilarious and hideous satire
around the expectations of
glamour and refinement assigned
to her. As a character, Patsy
has several functions which
cover new ground in television
culture: she overturned ageist
assumptions by opening up a
space in television for the
representation of women of all
ages as humorous; as an
"unruly woman" she
violated, in a highly
entertaining way, the unspoken
feminine sanction against making
a spectacle of herself; and she
confronted and redefined the
values of beauty, consumerism
and decorum inferred upon women,
particularly of a certain age
and social class.
Since playing what must surely
be her ideal role, and achieving
high critical acclaim in the
form of several awards including
BAFTAs and an Emmy, Joanna
Lumley's subsequent work has not
been nearly so demanding on her
talents. She played a
down-at-heel aristocrat in the
mediocre A Class Act and in a
documentary-drama, Girl Friday,
she had to fend for herself on
an inhospitable desert island,
the emphasis being on how she
will cope without couture
clothes, haute cuisine and
cosmetics. Both of these shows
seem to revolve around Lumley's
conventional image, but neither
seeks to recognise the
contradictions apparent since
Absolutely Fabulous in Lumley's
persona as the epitome of high
class. Whilst there may
generally be a lack of
recognition of Lumley's specific
capabilities as an actor, all
her major roles share a common
interest in casting her as an
independent woman--she is
nobody's wife or side-kick.
However, it seems ironic that
Absolutely Fabulous, whilst
giving Lumley a new lease of
life and promoting her to an
international audience, has
remained an almost unique forum
for her talent as a comedy
actor.
-Nicola Foster
Joanna
Lumley's lengthy career in
television has been marked
chiefly by two components--her
image as glamorous and refined,
and the characters she has
played in three popular series,
which span three decades. Her
work over the years has been
varied, encompassing theatre,
film, and several major
advertising campaigns, as well
as television drama, comedy and
regular celebrity appearances.
Equally, her work has been of
widely varying standards,
ranging from the flimsy and
trite to award-winning
performances. 
