ACTOR · BORN 1946
Joanna Lumley
- Born
- 1 May 1946
- Known for
- The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Absolutely Fabulous (1992), Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016), Marple (2004)
21 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
Joanna Lumley (born 1 May 1946) is an actor best known for The Wolf of Wall Street, Absolutely Fabulous and Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.
21 Interesting Facts About Joanna Lumley
Interesting Facts (13)
- #001
In April 2009, Joanna Lumley became the public face of the Gurkhas' campaign in the United Kingdom and helped persuade the British government to give Gurkhas who had served in the Army the right to settle in the UK; when she visited Nepal in July 2009, crowds hailed her as a hero and a goddess, and Nepal's President and Prime Minister thanked her for championing their cause.
- #002
Although her part in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) was tiny, Joanna Lumley spent two months on the production, dubbing the voices of several of the international beauties in German, Chinese and a Norwegian accent.
- #003
In an episode of Absolutely Fabulous (1992), Joanna Lumley's character claims to have been a Bond Girl, then adds, "Julian Bond"; Lumley really was a Bond Girl, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).
- #004
Girl Friday (1994), the BBC show in which Joanna Lumley had to fend for herself alone on a desert island for 10 days, paved the way for reality shows like "Shipwrecked" and "Survivor."
- #005
Joanna Lumley was the inspiration for Glenn Close's voice as Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians (1996).
- #006
Joanna Lumley sat on the 1985 Booker Prize jury and publicly distanced herself from the decision when Keri Hulme's "The Bone People," controversial for its depiction of child abuse, won.
- #007
On 6 May 2023, Lumley attended the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, and on 3 July 2023 she revealed she has prosopagnosia, which makes it hard to recognize faces.
- #008
She played the English Girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) and Irma Bunt in BBC Radio 4's 2014 adaptation of the novel, which she had also read on Radio 4's "Book at Bedtime" in 1989.
- #009
Lumley conceived the controversial Garden Bridge, a planned memorial to Princess Diana in the form of a tree-covered bridge across the Thames to the South Bank; approved by London Mayor Boris Johnson, it was scrapped in 2017 by his successor, Sadiq Khan, citing "multiple serious issues," after £37 million of public money had been spent without anything being built.
- #010
She cuts and colors her own hair.
- #011
She wrote a regular column for The Times for more than a year.
- #012
She writes journalism.
- #013
In 1967, she appeared in a Nimble Bread ad.
Behind the Scenes (2)
- #014
She is also "the voice" of AOL in Great Britain. She greets subscribers when they "log on", tells them they have mail, and says goodbye when they "log off". She revealed this on The Graham Norton Show (2007) a few years ago.
- #015
She is the daughter of James (1917-1999) and Thyra (née Weir) Lumley (1920-2005).
Characters & Cast (1)
- #016
After failing her audition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), where she was told she was "Too fat and too ugly!", Joanna Lumley went into modeling.
Life & Family (5)
- #017
In 1991, an Oxford University college renamed its common room from Nelson Mandela to Joanna Lumley.
- #018
Joanna Lumley's ancestry is Scottish, English, Irish and, through a great-great-grandfather on her mother's side, Danish.
- #019
Oxford Brookes University (2002), the University of St Andrews (2006), Queen's University Belfast (July 2008) and the University of Chester (March 2019) have all given Joanna Lumley honorary doctorates.
- #020
Her grandfather was Colonel Leslie Weir, CIE, a political officer in British India, where she was born, and in Joanna Lumley in the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon (1997) she retraced the journey he and his wife made in 1931 to visit the King of Bhutan.
- #021
The University of Kent awarded her an honorary doctorate.
Related pages
- The Conjuring 2 — Joanna Lumley comes up in the facts on that page
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- Wikipedia
- IMDb
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