Learning lines

Whether they look great or not, there are fewer and fewer parts for older women and most of them are typecast.

But with a typically stoic shrug, Geraldine smiles and adds that while some favour the 'can't beat them join them' school of plastic surgery, it is not an option she will contemplate.

"There are some actresses I don't even recognise any more, but it doesn't make them look any better and soon they are going discover the damage of all this treatment. Besides, once you've started on that path where do you stop?

"I feel healthy. I had a full MOT when I was 50 and I eat well and keep fit. I'm just more careful than I used to be. But if you're working in Hollywood, to be part of it you do what you have to do, and I am not interested.

"So now I am too old for Juliet and Kate, but can play Lady Macbeth and Gertrude. And now I'm Ranyevskaya rather than Varya. On TV unfortunately, there is a perception that people don't want to watch older people, so women play mothers far too young to have such old daughters. In Sins I would have been 15 when I had my daughter, but that didn't put them off."

Regardless of the ageism culture, Geraldine still feels incredibly lucky to have got where she is. She knows she would have had to sacrifice her life in London, where she lives with her husband of 17 years and their children, to break America.

"I'm not paranoid because I know what I am and where I am, as old as I am. But we are experiencing a very young culture at the moment, and if I'm put out to grass I will just concentrate on the theatre."

We may have touched a nerve here, but Geraldine James has nothing to worry about on this front, because her career is going swimmingly. She has never had to work for money and has been employed since she left university in a dazzling array of roles, her best known including Ghandi, The Jewel In The Nile, Band Of Gold and Sins.

She hopes her latest film project will finally bring the film acclaim she has been yearning for. Calendar Girls, due out in September, is the story behind the WI nude calendar. It looks set to be the female equivalent of The Full Monty and is predicted to be a box office hit.

"It's exciting. Of course I play the baddie, but it is absolutely fantastic and the reviews have been great," she says.

In the meantime, Geraldine is treading the boards at the Oxford Playhouse in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard by the Oxford Stage Company, and enjoying herself immensely.

She puts the play's success down to the brilliant translation by Samuel Adamson.

Having starred in it before, she knows that feelings often get lost in some of the old-fashioned scripts.

"You can feel removed from the inspiration and implications of the play, but this version comes from the heart and gets the sense of what Chekhov wanted to say," she explains.

"Chekhov was also emphatic that it was meant to be funny, so our production is more farcical. It's very true to Chekhov, and that's what matters."

As for her own inspiration, she says she draws on Dustin Hoffman as being the greatest influence on her stage

persona, having co-starred with him in The Merchant Of Venice.

"He taught me to trust myself on stage and

prepare for the art. I know my lines backwards now, so I can really develop the part."

But beware, turn your mobile phone off before the performance because if there is one thing Geraldine James hates, it's being interrupted.

"It's terribly off-putting. The audience thinks they are in 1904 Russia then a phone goes off and it's like water running out of a sink, the audience's concentration just goes. And it always happens at a crucial part of the play."

The Cherry Orchard opens on July 1 at the Oxford Playhouse.

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