The Guardian’s Rich Pelley talks to Celia Imrie about Celebrity Traitors, trapeze lessons, Bond villain ambitions, Michael Caine’s top tips, and how she was told off by George Lucas on the set of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
So I sit down to watch Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and who do I see flying a spaceship? How on earth did you end up doing that? Bisleys_Jaffa_Cakes
Bizarrely, I was doing a play called The Hothouse with the late, great Harold Pinter. One matinee, little did I know that the casting director for Star Warswas sitting in the audience. She took one look at me in my nightie and thought: “She’d make a marvellous fighter pilot.” And I’m absolutely delighted that I became Bravo 5.
By the way, I have no idea whether I got shot down, whether I killed anybody, whether I survived or whose side I was on. I have absolutely no idea, except that I was Bravo 5. I got told off by George Lucas for wearing lipstick because I was the only girl – the only female fighter pilot.
Read the interview in full here, and stream Imrie in The Phantom Menace on Disney+.
