According to my research, you were working as a model in 1961 but you tell me you’re 50 NOW. I’m afraid I’m having trouble doing the math!

I said I'm fifty-something, you cheeky fellow! I started modeling at seventeen, actually. Before that I hadn't given it a thought. We lived in several countries when I was a child - my father worked as an engineer supervising the construction of concrete plants in Nigeria, Ecuador, Kenya. There was a great deal of dam-building going on in those days. I was sent back to England when I was twelve to go to school and was in fact still at school when several of my classmates and I were selected to pose for an advertisement for a line of crisps. I've quite forgotten the crisps' name as they were soon out of business! But for some reason, a talent scout found my look appealing and within weeks I was working regularly. So much so I never went to university!

Midwich Studios – long hours, low pay, and the movies were often called "disreputable" in the reviews. But you say you enjoyed working for them?

Oh, it was lovely. Like a repertory company in theatre. I don't care what the critics had to say - the people at Midwich worked very hard. They were all quite professional. I recall being particularly impressed by the fellow who ran the art department. For all the money they had to spend, the sets were quite something, I thought. I was so very young and inexperienced, I'm sure I thought it all quite normal.

You’ve seen some of the fanzines devoted to Midwich, and the way the fans put their movies, AND Sir Clement, up on a pedestal. What’s your reaction to all this in 1998?

At first, I was rather taken aback. Life has marched on, you know, and one's own personal history tends to be filled with milestones that seem more important than others. That being said, I'm awfully proud to have been a part of something so celebrated. The first I really took notice of it all was '89, when the BFI held a month-long Midwich retrospective. My only notion of this sort of appreciation was an interview I had done with a fellow named Richard Klemensen in the early eighties for a magazine of his - is it LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS or some such thing? He had assured me then there was a following of some significance but I hadn't taken it seriously.

Gosh, is LITTLE SHOPPE still around? I remember that from when I was a kid!

It most certainly is being published. He's quite a passionate fellow, Richard, and I think he performs a valuable service to the history of film!

Terry Sharp ... I find his movies rather slow-paced but some of the hardcore fans write like his are the best horror movies ever made! What am I missing?

I'm a working girl and not a film historian but I reckon the reason Terry's films are so celebrated and studied are their literate nature. His aesthetic, I think, was born of the Gothic, you know? Or perhaps more rightly I should say the Romantic. He was quite a Romantic figure himself. The Byronic rake, as it were. Beyond that, his films, no matter the outlandish subject matter, always had characters who were well-thought out. Have I answered your question, Tom? I'm never sure!

WATERLOO, with a decent budget and decent schedule – what was THAT experience like, after working in the Midwich salt mines?

You would think it would have been a much better experience but it was quite the opposite. At the time the producer, Silvio Colaianni, cast me in WATERLOO, I thought it was to be my big break. It was a huge undertaking. We were to shoot all over the Continent and in studio in Rome. But there was so much fighting and uncertainty over the script - well, that's my take on what happened anyway. Everything dragged on for so very long and I lost a number of very good jobs as a consequence. The worst was losing out on the James Bond picture. Being a Bond girl would have been a very good thing, I think. It's a pity as the film should have been superb. Instead, it was a terrible disaster. Scarcely released.

I was surprised to find you playing such a small part in CULT OF DRACULA. Did you get on Sharp’s bad side or something?

Goodness, no. You've no doubt heard some nasty rumor about my having dated Terry - well, it's a fiction. He was more of a father figure to me. With the Dracula picture he was actually doing me a favor. I desperately needed a job when I returned to England but was already forgotten! Terry, bless him, gave me the part out of kindness. I would gladly have worked with him again given the opportunity. But, of course, that was the beginning of his difficult period. Tragic, really.

Prior to TIME, GENTLEMEN, you obviously had financial your ups and downs as you pursued your career. During "the bad times," did you ever have the feeling you’d maybe begun your professional life with a misstep, getting into acting in the first place?

Not so very much. I took ownership of my mistakes a long time ago. I had never set out to be an actress and when it dried up it wasn't as though I was losing my self, you see? That being said, I had been bitten, so to speak, and continued to pursue it. I decided to try the stage - learn what it was really all about. If I hadn't done that - and starved a bit! - I never would have gotten the television work. Certainly not TIME, GENTLEMEN. Having those hard times molded me in a such a way that I was better with my earnings on the series. I lived with an eye to the future for a change!

How were you received in Hollywood when you came over for HARVARD YARD? Did you get the sense that your co-workers were familiar with the work you’d done in Europe?

To be honest, it was a bit of culture shock. I earned more in one season than I did in five years on TIME, GENTLEMEN! I enjoyed Los Angeles - I go back every winter to visit. Of course, I loved the attention I got playing Sally from the viewers - a number of them teenaged boys! Tad Benton, the casting director, was a bit of an Anglophile, I think, because, as you know, he brought in several of the cast from British film and television. Several of us knew one another from our work in England - it's a terribly small business here.

The Midwich fans ... I know you can't say anything bad about them because you're making your living now by going to these cons, but ... you must tire of them doing nothing but asking about your worst movies, no?

I don't think of them as my worst movies! They're being taught in film schools -- or so I'm told. And I think the fans are delightful! On occasion you'll find one who is boorish or inappropriate - but on the whole I'm grateful for their love of the films. I was at a convention recently and watched THE RETURN OF FRANKENSTEIN with dozens of fans of the film and it was a very moving experience. Six-time Rondo-winning writer Tom Weaver's newest book is McFarland's EARTH VS. THE SCI-FI FILMMAKERS, featuring interviews with Arch Hall, Jr., Donnie Dunagan, Peter Graves, Gene Barry, Gary Conway and 15 other sci-fi/horror vets.