You wouldn’t expect Miriam Margolyes to be someone who embarrasses easily, but a recent interview had suggested otherwise.
The outspoken actress and author, 83, is best known for starring as Madame Sprout in two Harry Potter films, and has opened up about her health in recent weeks.
After claiming that she knows when she’s going to die, she has now given more insight into her life after being diagnosed with spinal stenosis – a condition that puts pressure on the spinal cord.
In a recent interview, she went back to when she was diagnosed with the condition, and the requests she made of TV directors while filming for certain shows.
‘When I started kind of failing physically, I remember saying to directors and producers, please don’t show me clambering out of a car or climbing upstairs on my hands and knees,’ she said.
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Speaking to the Radio Times, she continued: ‘I didn’t want people to see that because I was embarrassed to see myself looking so pathetic.’
However, in the years since her diagnosis, Miriam has said she’s met countless people who have thanked her for willing to show how she manages her condition in the public eye.
She said: ‘I’ve met loads of people who have said I gave them the courage to do things that they never thought they could. So I’m very pleased about that.’
In a recent interview with The Telegraph she admitted to finding it frustrating that she has to find work in roles that ‘confine’ her to wheelchairs.
While adding that she finds the physical constraints of old age ‘limiting and depressing’, she confessed: ‘I yearn to play roles that don’t confine me to wheelchairs, but I’m just not strong enough.’
Speaking on the Table Manners podcast with Jessie Ware and Lennie Ware, Miriam said she was determined to take her condition in her stride.
‘I have a bad back. I’m probably going to be in a wheelchair soon. And you know, you have to come to terms with what life throws at you.’
In 2023, Miriam cited her weight as the cause of her spine issues shortly before she was spotted walking with the assistance of crutches.
Speaking on the How To Fail podcast with Elizabeth Day, she lamented: ‘The one thing I have not conquered and should have conquered is my weight. I am a blubber mass. I am fat. And to be fat and 82 is truly pathetic.’
She continued: ‘It’s such a defeat. A cream bun, a chocolate, a helping of chopped liver is more important than your health and aesthetic presentation?
‘No, it isn’t more important, it’s just greed, lack of discipline, all the things I’m embarrassed by in myself.
‘It is a major failure and because of that I’ve got spinal stenosis, I can’t walk, I’m going to be in a wheelchair before I’m much older.’