Dame Joanna Lumley shows no signs of slowing down as she marks her 79th birthday. Her first significant role was a brief appearance as a Bond girl in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. She then secured roles in popular TV series like Coronation Street, Steptoe and Son, and Are You Being Served?, before landing her breakthrough role as Purdey in The New Avengers.

Speaking at the SANDS International Film Festival of St Andrews in Scotland, the iconic star revealed that she has no plans to retire. "I'll be here when I'm 90 - as long as I can speak. When I was 16 and told the careers officer at my convent school that I wanted to go into acting, he told me that the only jobs open to me in film would be as a continuity or makeup girl," she said, according to the Daily Mail.

Her comments come as Joanna opened up about her mortality, telling My Weekly: "As you near the top of the hill you suddenly think, “Gosh, there’s not all that amount of time left.

"My time must be coming quite soon, and I don’t want to have wasted a minute of being on this beautiful planet.’

"I used to panic when I was young, but as I’ve got older I’ve started literally to live day to day.

"With age, you work out what matters. I always knew that good stuff would come along when I was older. When I was 18, I longed to be 30. When I was 30, longed to be 50. We mustn’t be led into thinking getting old is bad. Growing old is good."

She also addressed her retirement back in 2022, telling Metro: "I will slow down when my body slows down and the jobs slow down — when everybody says, “Can we have this show but without Joanna Lumley in it?” Then there’ll be more books to read and a bit more pottering in the garden,’ she said.

"But you mustn’t ever see these things as a setback. You have to see it as a new opportunity."