Best of Britt

BRITT Ekland is in the mood for correction. From screen goddess of the Sixties to turning 60 this October, Britt's journey has taken her from Swedish toothpaste commercials, through Bond babe to fitness videos and now very British, very provincial tours of farces and mysteries.

Next week Britt is in York, at the Grand Opera House in Robert King's Dragon Variation. It is is billed as a "romantic thriller, a creepy tale of a lonely cottage, a beautiful widow, a handsome stranger and unexplained visits by assorted strange characters".

Reading the description to Britt, down the phone to Birkenhead, she balks first at "thriller".

"It's not really a thriller; it's a sort of love story mystery... though I can't say too much or I will give the whole story away, but that's what we've decided. It's a mystery, not a thriller. Let's put it this way, there's a problem to be solved," says Britt, who has returned to Britain from America for the tour, and is still fighting off a ticklish cough.

As with all her answers, she talks more seriously than at her July 1994 press conference for Run For Your Wife - her last stage appearance in York - when former Confessions star Robin Askwith provided jovial, laddish distraction.

So, Britt, you are playing a beautiful widow in a lonely cottage..."Well I do play a widow, and she does live on her own in the country," she says, cutting across the line of investigation. "And beautiful? I do try to look my best!"

More on beauty later. First, more on the widow, not the beautiful bit. Describe her, Britt. "She's slightly mad, and I can go for that!"

Thoughts of her famous scene of wild abandon in The Wicker Man suddenly come to mind. "No, I have never played anyone as mad as this widow before, but I did start my theatrical career late in life - and it started with the difficult stuff: farce.

"That's very difficult, but very satisfying to get it right. Then I went to Australia in Daphne du Maurier's September Tide which was also about a widow, but not a mystery!"

Unprompted, Britt continued. "I'm playing widows. How wonderful! Thirty or 40 years ago it would have been better to be a widow than a divorcee. There was something about marriage being for life, but many people seem to have done away with marriage," she says.

So, can a relationship be for ever? Britt answers only after a long pause, as if reflecting on her two marriages, to actor Peter Sellers and drummer Slim Jim O'Donnell, both of which ended in divorce.

"I have no idea. You are asking the wrong person," she replies. The air felt chilly.

Time for a squirt of de-icer, and a question to the Swedish sex symbol about her changing perceptions of romance. "I'm sure my view of romance has changed. When you're younger, you're less cynical; you believe love will be forever. As you grow older, you realise it's impossible."

Time for a change of tack, and her reflections on her screen career that encompasses more than 30 films. Favourite Ekland movies? "I loved doing The Night They Raided Minsky's; they even closed the New York streets for us; and the Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun was just fantastic to make," she says.

Her least favourite, for the bad memories, is Robin Hardy's cult 1973 shocker, The Wicker Man, in which Britt was cast as the naked-dancing Willow, promiscuous daughter of the landlord on a remote Scottish isle. The DVD version is being released this month, bringing renewed, unwanted attention.

"It was not a happy filming experience," she recalls. "I finally did my bit for the documentary last November in America but I'd been refusing to do it for five years because I just didn't want to do it."

What did she dislike about making Hardy's film? "The whole thing. There were affairs going on; back-stabbing. I was pregnant, which I didn't know. It was just a very unhappy experience."

A couple of months ago, she watched the film again. "I didn't think much of it," she says, before going on to analyse The Wicker Man's cult status. "Part of that is because they burn him at the end, and usually films don't end like that. Part of it is that people perceive me as naked, and people love naked." Never mind that the dancing bottom belonged to a double and Britt was unhappy about its large size.

In her 60th year, Britt keeps herself in trim with a healthy diet, walking, and Pilates. The old teenage crush in me finds me reaching for the compliment of "looking fantastic". Out comes the correction stick again. "Yes there is something to looking good - 'fantastic' is pushing it a bit - as people still expect Mary Goodnight from the Bond movie to come out and I've learnt that's what I have to give. But as a woman, even if I wasn't an actress, it would be unacceptable to let myself go into gentle decline. That's not in my nature, and I would say that's a Swedish thing."

Final question, how does the media's celebrity couple coverage differ in the era of Posh and Becks from the days of Britt and Rod Stewart.

"The pressures are far greater today. I think it's very sad the press has that power: many relationships are being ruined by the coverage because they can't cope with the pressure," she says.

"I'm very glad I'm not in a celebrity relationship today."

Fact file:

Name: Britt Ekland

Real name: Britt-Marie Eklund

Born: Stockholm, Sweden, October 6 1942

Occupation: International film pin-up, latterly turned UK theatre star of pantomime, farce and thriller

Early career: Toothpaste commercial at 15; drama school; travelling theatre group in Sweden

Films: More than 30, including American debut After The Fox, with first husband Peter Sellers, 1966; The Night They Raided Minsky's, 1968; Get Carter, 1971; The Wicker Man, 1973 (her least favourite); The Man With The Golden Gun, as Mary Goodnight, 1973; Royal Flash, 1974; Casanova, 1977; Scandal, 1988

Relationships: Sixties, Goon Peter Sellers, married and divorced; Seventies, Scottish rocker Rod Stewart, in rock's most glamorous partnership, ended 1977; Eighties, Stray Cats drummer Jim McDonnell, alias Slim Jim Phantom, married in 1984, at 41- Jim 19 years her junior; divorced. Nineties.

Britt and fitness: Britt Fit video in 1992, still working out.

Rock trivia: Sang in French on Rod Stewart's 1976 hit Tonight's The Night

Food trivia: Vegetarian

Books: True Britt, autobiography, 1981; Sensual Beauty, 1984; Sweet Life, 1993

Odd fact: Vice-president of the Alzheimer's Society in Britain

Britt on men: "The ideal man doesn't exist. A husband is easier to find"

Sellers on Britt, post divorce: "A professional girlfriend and an amateur actress"

Britt on Britt 1980: "No more nude pictures, no more intimate relationships. I want to be taken seriously as a hard-working actress

In York: April 22 to 27, playing beautiful widow in Robert King's romantic mystery Dragon Variation, Grand Opera House. Box office: 01904 671818.

Updated: 11:04 Friday, April 19, 2002