NICHOLA McAULIFFE: 'It can't have been easy for you,' I told Michelle Pfeiffer, 'being so plain and all'

By Nichola Mcauliffe
Updated: 15:36 EST, 25 April 2009

I was playing Dame Sybil Thorndike when the call came. Go and meet legendary director Stephen Frears about appearing in a film alongside Michelle Pfeiffer.

This was it. The shot at movie glamour I had been waiting for. Granted, I had been a Bond girl twice - but only as the voices of the computers on board 007's BMW and Aston Martin. This role was going to put me up there with Penelope Cruz.

However, as Dame Sybil, great actress though she was, possessed the glamour of a bollard, I had to act fast.

My new character was an ex-ballet dancer, so the legs, neglected under Sybil's lisle and tweed, were oiled, waxed and massaged with amoeba skins.

The kapok hair was blowdried until it was smooth and shiny, while some subtle make-up was applied with delicate Japanese brushstrokes.

The effect was so good my husband assumed I was having an affair.

But if Stephen, director of The Queen, was remotely moved by my efforts, he hid it well. However, he did give me the part of Madame Aldonza in Cheri, which charts a love affair between the beautiful retired courtesan Lea (Pfeiffer) and Cheri (Rupert Friend) in Twenties Paris. We were filming on location in the French capital.

On any scale, this beat an episode of Doctors.

There were a couple of weeks before the production started, enough time to lose a stone and tone up the slack in the Legs, Bums And Abs class at Peckham Pulse.

Sadly, there was neither time nor money for a facelift, nose job, breast augmentation, collagen fillers or liposuction. Instead, I settled for a facepack and haircut from Clive at Michaeljohn which cost the same as a new tumble drier.

On arriving in Paris, I was taken to an elegant townhouse for a costume fitting, where a designer draped me in embroidered silks and exquisite jewellery. I gazed out of the window and was surprised how close we were to Crystal Palace.

That it was, in fact, the Eiffel Tower was more than obvious when I stood on my hotel balcony, looking up at its extraordinarily vulgar light display. I hadn't been so excited about a job since playing Falstaff in a school play.

I rose early the next day to exfoliate, depilate, tone and tighten. Then I stepped into a limousine, laughing at the agent who had said I wasn't beautiful enough for movies.

The film unit was set up at a fairytale chateau - mist hovered over the gardens and deer peered at us through ghostly trees. I was ushered to a trailer big enough for a family and stocked with enough food and drink to see me through a nuclear attack. And it had my name on it.

After settling in I was shepherded into the make-up van by a decorative young man who couldn't have done more for me unless I had rented him.

Sitting in the make-up chair, I noticed the fabulous actress Kathy Bates in the next seat. Now it's a strange thing but normal conversation like 'Good morning' or 'Does anybody know the French for hangover?' dries up in the presence of serious fame. You're never quite sure if stars want to talk.

I needn't have worried - shy though Miss Bates may be, she sure ain't standoffish. We exchanged pleasantries while the make-up artist prepared my wig. Shame my blonde bob would be covered but, hey, seeing the fabulous wigs on show, I wasn't worried.

I should have been. What she put on my head looked like road-kill.

'It looks like ... a wig,' I whimpered. 'It's supposed to. You have read the script, haven't you?'

I wanted to bellow: 'Of course not. I'm an actress. In the theatre you count the lines, in television you count the money and in films you count yourself lucky.' Instead, I tried: 'So,' how do you see Madame Aldonza?'

'Well,' the make-up artist said, 'I'm not sure about the bandaged legs.'

'What??' 'Yes. I think the arthritic hands will be enough.' A pause. 'Unless Stephen wants you to look like Henry VIII. Did you know he had terrible sores on his legs?'

She squinted at my face, then touched my flawless skin. 'Oh dear,' she sighed. 'You've got no lines.' Of course I didn't - I'd just spent the GDP of Albania getting rid of them.

'I'll have to paint them in,' said the make-up girl, reaching for a pot marked 'thread veins and crow's feet'. I wondered if she had another marked 'eye of newt'.

I emerged 40 minutes later looking like a badly Artexed wall with a dead badger on it.

Some of my scenes were with a female character described as ' mannish', so it was a joy to find the great Bette Bourne sitting at a card table in a well-cut riding habit.

The French crew were most impressed by her realistic-looking five o'clock shadow. I wasn't as Bette is, in fact, a man - one of Britain's greatest drag acts.

Then Miss Pfeiffer appeared. I've often heard women described as translucent, but she really is. Everything about her is delicate: bones, skin, features but, thank God, not her sensibilities.

Once she had got over the shock of working with a drag act and something that should have been clinging to the stonework of Notre Dame, she was huge fun.

During a break, I said: 'Oh, I do admire you.' Michelle looked down, modestly. 'No, I do,' I continued. 'After all, you've not had my advantages. It can't have been easy for you, being so plain and all.'

There was a split-second when one of the most beautiful women on Earth looked at the gargoyle in front of her before she fell about laughing.

A couple of days later my big moment with Kathy Bates came. We started on set at 9am, but because of endless retakes and unreliable light, it was almost 9pm before my closeup scene was called.

By this time, Kathy's work was done and I expected her to head for her trailer, leaving me to say my lines to empty air. Not a bit of it. Kathy stayed on set, helping me get through the scene. I thanked her profusely.

'Why wouldn't I?' she said with a smile. She has lovely teeth.

For the film's wedding scene, we moved from the chateau to a Paris church. Our trailers were strung out along a road in a barren area of the city. It was bare and ugly; lunch would probably be out of a catering van parked on the hard shoulder.

Wrong again. This was France. A marquee had been erected and waiters brought out our three-course lunch. On each linen-covered table were bottles of red and white wine.

I couldn't imagine such a thing on a British shoot. Something to do with health, safety and the operating of heavy machinery.

Lunch was a civilised and companionable affair, though a little sad for me as it was my last day on set.

To my surprise Stephen found time to say goodbye - not because he's too grand to but because directing a movie is slightly more intense than organising the Normandy Landings. I had already said my farewells to the leading ladies.

I took off Madame Aldonza's Brillo wig for the last time, straightened her arthritic fingers and headed for the Gare du Nord. Maybe not a movie star, maybe not a new rival for Kate Winslet, but still very, very happy.

So if there's anyone else out there making a film, I'm available.

• Cheri is released on May 8.