The actress has opened up about growing older

Joanna Lumley spoke about mortality earlier this year (Image: Getty)

Joanna Lumley recently opened up about her perspective on ageing, revealing that her awareness of time’s passage actually invigorates her further. The distinguished 79-year-old actress and performer also admitted she often contemplates her own mortality.

“As you near the top of the hill you suddenly think, ‘Gosh, there’s not all that amount of time left’,” she said in a conversation with My Weekly earlier this year, according to the Mirror. “All kinds of my beloved friends are beginning to leave.

“My time must be coming quite soon and I don’t want to have wasted a minute of being on this beautiful planet.” Joanna’s enthusiasm for life remains evident as she continues filling her schedule with thrilling ventures.

This year saw her sparkle in the comedy series Amandaland, a spin-off of the acclaimed sitcom Motherland, produced for the BBC. Its festive episode is scheduled to broadcast on BBC One from 9.15pm tonight (December 25), while the second series will debut in 2026.

Joanna has also recently featured in the Netflix thriller Fool Me Once, alongside a three-part ITV travel documentary where she journeys along Europe’s Danube River.

However, life hasn’t always been straightforward for the performer. The star previously disclosed to Vernon Kay on BBC 2 that she’s struggled with prosopagnosia for years, a condition that makes identifying faces exceptionally challenging.

In 2025, Joanna shone in the comedy series Amandaland (Image: Getty)

“I’ve got this weird thing with faces, I’ve got a face blindness,” she said a few years ago on the Tracks of My Years podcast, the Express reports. “It’s called prosopagnosia.

“I have to know who people are, I have to know in advance. I always say, ‘Please tell me who’s going to be there’, then I can match the name to the thing. I mean, lots of people say, ‘Oh, but you meet so many people’, it’s not to do with that, it’s completely different from that.

“It’s followed me and I never knew what it was. And I’d try a test. I’d look at somebody and then I would shut my eyes and see if I could see their face in my head. And I couldn’t.”

NHS guidance on prosopagnosia

The NHS reveals that prosopagnosia frequently goes beyond facial recognition difficulties, causing difficulties in determining gender, age, and differentiating between items like cars or wildlife. Unfortunately, there’s no treatment available for this, although identifying its distinctive characteristics may help make it more manageable.

Official online NHS guidance explains: “You’ll still see the parts of a face normally, but all faces may look the same to you. It affects people differently. Some people may not be able to tell the difference between strangers or people they do not know well. Others may not recognise the faces of friends and family, or even their own face.”

Fortunately, Joanna hasn’t permitted prosopagnosia to hinder her achievements. The 79-year-old’s illustrious theatrical journey encompasses numerous unforgettable roles across TV and film, featuring The New Avengers and Sapphire & Steel, as well as Absolutely Fabulous, Finding Alice, and Motherland.

In the ’60s, she was famously one of Ken Barlow’s initial love interests in Coronation Street. She even shared the silver screen with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Joanna is married to conductor Stephen Barlow. She relishes a fulfilling family life as the doting mother of Jamie and grandmother to Alice and Emily.