Miriam Margolyes on her love for Graham Norton, life at 80 and her thoughts on JK Rowling

British-Australian actress Miriam Margolyes, an OBE with her distinctive voice and on screen presence, is by all accounts, an icon. Though the creator of a myriad of unforgettable characters in everything from Romeo + Juliet to Harry Potter would never admit as much. She spoke to Jennifer McShane about her life well and truly lived as she releases her memoir This Much Is True

Miriam Margolyes: 'My career was reborn in the arms of Graham Norton. He’s the best there’s ever been.'

When the time came for me to interview the great Miriam Margoyles, I almost unwittingly caused it to get off to a bad start. “I can’t abide people being late,” she chirps at the other end of the phone (I was a few minutes behind schedule for our chat). But all is soon forgotten and the 80-year-old is in high spirits as we begin to delve into her remarkable career. We’re here to talk about her new autobiography, a collection of chapters each written almost as if it is its own short story, but end up talking about almost everything else instead. England — “I fucking loathe it at the moment” — how she fears disappointing people, her love of Charles Dickens even though, he was in her words, “a shit!” and that JK Rowling controversy.

Her memoir is beautifully written, I tell her. “It’s lovely to be praised as an actor, but that’s what I’m supposed to be good at! I’m not a writer, and I feel way out of my depth. So every word of praise I could squeeze out of you makes me very happy because it was hard to do,” she says of putting it together. “And it was scary as well because, first of all I’m 80 and I forget things, and I’m terrified that I will forget people who will be very hurt if they’re not in the book — it worries me.”