Joanna Lumley is reflecting on her life and sharing some sound advice while doing it.
The British actress, who turned 79 on Thursday, recently revealed in a bold statement that she expects her “time must be coming quite soon.”
The “Absolutely Fabulous” star said “beloved friends are beginning to leave” in an interview with My Weekly.
“As you near the top of the hill, you suddenly think: ‘Gosh, there’s not all that amount of time left,’” she continued. “My time must be coming quite soon and I don’t want to have wasted a minute of being on this beautiful planet.”
“The Wolf of Wall Street” actress explained she “used to panic when I was young, but as I’ve got older, I’ve started literally to live day to day.”
Getting older has only been a gift for Lumley.
“Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.” Fox Searchlight / Everett Collection
“With age, you work out what matters. I always knew that good stuff would come along when I was older,” she confessed. “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.”
Lumley admitted that while she is able to be present and live in the moment, she isn’t sure the younger generation is able to do the same with the consumption of social media.
“You need time in your head,” the BAFTA winner shared. “I’m so afraid we’re going to breed a generation who don’t know the world and don’t know how to talk.”
And even in Lumley’s later years, her career hasn’t slowed down one bit. She portrays Felicity Sanderson in the British sitcom “Amandaland” and starred in Harlen Coben’s “Fool Me Once” on Netflix in 2024.
Now, Lumley is set to play Grandmama Hester Frump in Season 2 of “Wednesday” on the streaming platform.
“It’s wonderful. I get to wear many, many huge wigs, one on top of the other – and lots of quite constraining clothes, so I love it,” Lumley gushed over the role on the horror show.
In “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as stockbroker Jordan Belfort, Lumley played Aunt Emma, the aunt to Margot Robbie’s Naomi Lapaglia.
There was even a scene in the film where Lumley kisses DiCaprio, 50, although it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“I did kiss Leonardo DiCaprio, about 15 times in fact,” the actress said in 2023 at a dinner for the Elizabeth’s Legacy of Hope charity, per LadBible. “There are so many takes and you both have to chew so much chewing gum.”
Lumley added, “It’s like kissing someone in a dentist’s waiting room.”
The actress was a model before getting her start in Hollywood as Purdey in the ITV action series “The New Avengers” at age 30 in 1976.
“It was a proper big part in a series,” Lumley told The Guardian in 2023, “made over the course of two years, so you have a real chance to get into a character and work all the time.”
The star went on to play Patsy Stone in the British sitcom “Absolutely Fabulous” in 1992 opposite creator Jennifer Saunders.
Looking back at playing unapologetic women, Lumley told the outlet: “They are women without brakes.”
“It doesn’t matter what they do, they don’t care,” she expressed. “I think people found that refreshing because women were usually anxious about things.”
“It was back to clowning again,” she recalled of the role, “back to making people laugh.”
In 2016, the women reunited for “Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.”
“It’s fantastic,” she told “Good Morning America.”
“And to have had a character for 25 years and still be there is brilliant, because I know exactly what she’s going to do. So although I am not like her, she is mine!”
