EXCLUSIVE: Actress Celia Imrie, 73, mistaken for PORN star by blushing fan

British star and national treasure Celia Imrie, who stars in the new series of Celebrity Traitors, opens up about the embarrassing time she was mistaken for a different kind of actress

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One of our finest actors, when Celia Imrie joins the cast of The Celebrity Traitors next week, she may be at an unfair advantage - as she already has treachery in her blood! Celia’s ancestral cousin, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, was accused of bribing the Titanic crew with a £5 cheque to board the first lifeboat with his wife Lucy as the ship sank - despite the captain declaring it was for women and children only.

Celia, 73, says of the controversial Scottish baronet, whose wife was a famous dress designer: “I will stick up for him.” Research has shown Celia that he gave the money to the crew of the doomed ship, which famously sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, to find a new life.

She continues: “He thought he was doing a good thing and, at that point, I am sure they thought they were all going to get off. They could not possibly have known what was to follow.” Recalling his wife, Lucy, with some admiration, she adds: “She invented the tea gown, the slip skirt and the catwalk. She was very famous and made dresses for the Hollywood stars.”

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But the scandal was so onerous for his family that Celia says, when she played fictional first class passenger Grace Rushton in a 2012 Jullian Fellowes TV drama, Titanic, she was asked if the Duff-Gordons could be left out. Celia, who has never married and has homes in London and Nice, France, says: “One of his distant relations said, ‘Please tell Julian Fellowes not to bring all that up again,’ because it clearly upset the whole generation.”

Speaking about her career at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, south-west London, Celia made it clear she couldn’t have felt more at home than she did filming in Scotland for The Celebrity Traitors. Airing on BBC1 from October 8, it will launch with an extra-long 70-minute first episode at 9pm and will be broadcast twice weekly on Wednesday and Thursdays, as well as being available on iPlayer.

Celia will be put through her paces by host Claudia Winkleman, alongside a stellar line-up, including Stephen Fry, Alan Carr, Paloma Faith, Kate Garraway, Tom Daley and a host of other big names.

The actress, whose father Dr David Imrie was a radiologist from Glasgow, says: “I'm very proud of my half Scott's blood. I once filmed in Inveraray Castle for The Diplomat.”

Playing a fierce character - disliked by everyone - in the show starring Keri Russell, she says she didn’t really get to know the rest of the cast until they filmed in the castle. “Then we were going for swims in the loch in the morning and having whiskey at night,” she says. “It changed completely and we all became good friends.”

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Meanwhile, The Celebrity Traitors will be yet another career adventure for Celia, who leads an all-star cast in the current Netflix series The Thursday Murder Club, but is known for everything from Bridget Jones to Calendar Girls, Nanny McPhee, Star Wars and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - to name a few of her credits.

Full of entertaining stories, she laughs recalling how she was once mistaken for a ‘70s porn star, as she sat in a cafe in LA having morning coffee with Glenda Jackson - who she says was “followed everywhere by adoring fans”. She explains: “This sweet young man had waited for us to go in, as he had spotted Glenda and we sat down and got ready for our coffee.

“He then came in with a red rose and bowed at her feet and said, ‘Oh my God. It is really you. Oh Glenda, I did not see you.’ He then looked at Timothy West and said, ‘Oh, this is so thrilling.’ He swung around to look at me and said, ‘You are my favourite. I have seen all of your Swedish films.’ Thinking I was a porn star, he said, ‘I love you.’"

She also laughs recalling how she was interviewed for the 2016 BBC 2 series The Real Marigold Hotel with her hair only half cut. Remembering how she had gone with shoulder-length hair to Vidal Sassoon on LA’s Rodeo Drive, she says: “The phone went and it was my agent who said, ‘Get yourself to Fox Studios immediately. They are casting a film in India and you have to go now.’

“I only had one side of my hair done, but I was told to get my passport and go. I went to Fox Studios and got into the interview. They were all very nice, but nobody mentioned how ridiculous I looked. One side (of my hair) short and one side long. They must have thought it was a new fashion! A least I was memorable.”

Another funny memory she shares involved Harold Pinter, who she once starred opposite. “I was in a play called The Hothouse with the late great Harold Pinter and I got to kiss him in my nightie every night,” she says. “He was a great kisser, by the way!”

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Celia did not realise that the casting director for Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace was in the audience. She says: “She took one look at me and thought, ‘She will make a good fighter pilot’.” Playing the character Bravo 5 in the 1999 sci-fi classic, she continues: “The only time I got to speak to George Lucas was when he told me to take my lipstick off.”

Wearing lipstick as a fighter pilot has not been her only acting gaffe. When she was a struggling young actress, she says: “I was in a play in Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire. It was November and I was so cold. In between the matinee and the evening performance, I went to M&S and bought a fluorescent pink cardigan, because it was so cold.

“There was a break in act four and for the first time in Mablethorpe I was warm. I suddenly heard my cue for act five and went on stage, but forgot I was still wearing the cardigan.”

She is also the only woman who can say that Colin Firth gave her a shiner! Playing Nanny McPhee at the time, she says: “It was my most favourite part with Colin Firth. We were having a bit of a fight in a scene and he threw me up against a wall and I landed up on the floor. His knee went in my eye and it really, really hurt.

“I woke up the next morning and I had a real shiner. I was longing for someone to say ‘Celia? Who gave you that?’ And I could say ‘Colin Firth.’”

While Celia, whose son Angus Imrie with the actor Benjamin Whitrow was born in 1994, is happy to wax lyrical about the fun she’s had in the past, when it comes to The Celebrity Traitors, she remains tight-lipped.

“I had a wonderful time, but that's all I'm going to tell you,” she says. Asked how long she stays in, she reiterates: "I'm not going to tell you. Good try!"

*The Celebrity Traitors launches on 8 October on BBC 1 at 9pm and will be available on iPlayer