Zooming Out: What the Celebrity PA to One of Britain’s Most Iconic Actors taught me about Perspective

Some people don’t steal the spotlight – they steady the air around them.

I met her twice. The first time was at a church garden party in Kensington – one of those quintessentially English afternoons where everyone seems to bring their best selves along with a tray of something homemade. There were stalls selling antiques and hand-polished trinkets, the odd oil painting propped beside flowerpots, and conversations floating through the hedgerows like gossip with good manners. Children dashed between tables. Paper cups were aligned with surgical precision. And of course, there was always someone arguing over who got the last slice of Victoria sponge, or whose turn it was to take down the bunting. The charm lay in the details – in the quiet pecking order of volunteers, in the slow drift of neighbours comparing jam glazes, in the polite feuds about fold-up chairs.

It wasn’t until later someone mentioned, almost in passing, that she had been long-time celebrity PA to one of Britain’s most iconic actors. By then, it made perfect sense. There was something about her poise, her humour, her ability to cut through nonsense with grace – a woman who had clearly stood beside greatness, without ever needing to chase it. Within that swirl of soft chaos, she stood out – not by raising her voice, but by lowering the temperature. Secretary. Confidante. The quiet hand in the room. But she never announced it, and never needed to. Her presence alone offered a kind of grace that couldn’t be rehearsed.

The second time I saw her was at a private gathering in Knightsbridge – a home that didn’t just contain elegance, it exhaled it. She was seated in an armchair just behind a long dining table, in front of a striking Art Deco painting that had once belonged to Barbra Streisand. The painting didn’t need to be explained. Neither did she. They both simply were – present, composed, timeless. We didn’t talk about fame or film sets. What came instead were stories – about life, about loss, about those moments too strange or tender to summarise. She spoke the way someone speaks when they’ve learned that laughter is often wiser than opinion. Nothing she said was forced. Nothing needed an explanation.

She reminded me of the best kind of theatre – the kind that knows laughter isn’t frivolous, it’s foundational. Shakespeare understood this. He always left space for the character who sees clearly – not the loudest or the grandest, but the one with humour in their back pocket and insight in their eyes. The fool, they called them – but that was the trick. The fool was the truth-teller. The one who got it while everyone else postured and unravelled.

Lorca understood it too. He wrote about duende – that raw, trembling force that lives where joy and sorrow collide. Not polished performance, but something far deeper: soul. And that’s what she carried. A kind of quiet duende, worn-in and unspoken.

She didn’t give speeches. But at just the right moment, as we stood together chatting about life and all its ups and downs – glass in hand, eyes twinkling – she said:

“You just have to laugh. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

It wasn’t a quote. It wasn’t meant to be profound. But it was. And it landed like a gentle truth I didn’t know I’d been waiting to hear.

By then, I’d spent years trying to gain perspective. Years untangling family dynamics, doing the inner work, peeling back layer after layer of misunderstanding and misalignment. There had been hurt, distance, repair – and even with healing, a weight I couldn’t always name. I had made space for joy and success too – I was stepping into the kind of roles I’d once dreamed of – but some part of me still carried the past like a quiet echo.

She didn’t change that. But she gave it a kind of light. A soft border. The kind that turns something from overwhelming to simply part of the picture. I left that evening with her words folded neatly into my pocket – like a compass that didn’t point anywhere specific, but reminded me there was a way through.

She didn’t change my story. But she helped me carry it differently.

Her words will stay with me. Not because they were poetic. But because they were real.

“You just have to laugh. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

And really – what else is there?