Susan Hampshire is a guest star in Casualty, playing a loving wife who finds it difficult to accept her husband’s terminal illness. The 74-year-old actress, who has won three Emmys, tells TV Choice about her episode, reflects on her early role in the Sixties drama The Forsyte Saga, and her decision to reveal her dyslexia.

Is your Casualty episode a real tearjerker?
I think it is, and it’s such a relevant thing, the right to die. I don’t quite know what the right expression is. But the episode addresses people’s choice about whether they want to continue to be resuscitated.

You play Caitlin, and Michael Jayston is your husband, David. Did you already know each other?
I‘d met him before, many years ago, and he was a pleasure to work with. It’s a really nice job to have. No wonder people want to go on Casualty. All the actors are amazing. I felt a bit out of my depth, because they’re all so good. And we had a lovely director. It was a lovely job, and it pulled me out of my voluntary retirement in a nice way.

Would you say you’re retired then?
I’m not really. I’m going to do a little film next year. But it’s just that I’m doing things near to home. Whereas in the old days, I would have done a series that was miles away, or gone on tour. But my husband [80-year-old theatre impresario Eddie Kulukundis] does need me, and I’m only too happy to spend my twilight years with him, joined at the hip, as it were.

When you look back on your career, do you feel that playing Fleur in The Forsyte Saga was your biggest break?
It was certainly the biggest break, because to be in something that is good and successful is just so special. It had 20 million viewers, each week. And the same all around the world. The impact was enormous, and you know, often you’re in something that’s successful, but it might be rubbish, or you might be in something that’s really good, but nobody sees it. So to have the combination of the two is wonderful. Sadly, I’m one of the few left alive. Dear Maggie Tyzack went earlier this year. It was wonderful to play someone nasty, they’re always the best parts.

On the subject of period dramas, are you watching Downton Abbey?
I certainly am – I love it. I also loved Cranford. And I love Strictly Come Dancing. Downton I find very compelling, because I worked with [its writer] Julian Fellowes on Monarch Of The Glen. He played Kilwillie. He just goes from one success to the other. You’re always happy when people are having a great time and being really successful. But he’s a very clever man, he has a brilliant brain, so he deserves it.

You revealed you are dyslexic in your 1981 autobiography. Why did you choose to talk about that aspect of your life?
I think, at that time, the subject needed to be aired, because there was still a great big stigma, and because dyslexia is such a difficult word people were confused. They didn’t know whether it was a heart disease, or like eczema, or a body rash. And I felt very, very strongly that it was wrong for children to be stigmatised at school. I feel very passionately – to this day – that children who have reading and spelling difficulties need more help and they should be assessed earlier and it’s not the end of the world. Look at Richard Branson, or Leonardo Da Vinci. It doesn’t stop you as long as you have something that you really want to do in life.

David Collins