Actor Felicity Kendal: 'My father would never forgive me for owning two houses'

Felicity Kendal, 75, found fame in 1975 in the BBC television series The Good Life. She has starred in many West End plays since the 1960s, such as Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and TV shows including The Camomile Lawn and Rosemary & Thyme. Today she lives in London with her second husband, the theatre director Michael Rudman.

Did your childhood influence your attitude toward money?

Enormously. I grew up with a touring theatre company. My dad was a maverick actor-manager who toured the Far East, and I went out there at nine months old and again at six, living as a gipsy with no fixed abode. There was never any security with money.

The thought of a mortgage and owning a house was his idea of hell. So I grew up with this mantra ringing in my ears: possessions are rubbish; watch the sunset; do a play; make what you need to travel to the next gig.

I was playing pageboys and working backstage, polishing brass and ironing costumes. I was given a little book as pocket money with “In” and “Out” columns. My dad said: “Add up what you’ve got and never spend more.” He never obeyed these rules; he always had more “Out” and was always borrowing it. If somebody was hard up, he’d give them his last five rupees, but he wouldn’t buy presents. I’m now an avid present-giver: instead of one jumper, you’ll get two.

At nine, I went with my family and eight actors to Singapore, and my father broke the contract. With no return ticket or work, we got a school hall, printed leaflets and went around ­Singapore handing them out, saying: “Please come to the show, She Stoops to Conquer. It’s free!”

The audience packed in because it was free and, at the end, my father, to my humiliation, got up and asked them for money to get us back to India, as we were stranded. We got the money to take us back – on deck, not in cabins – and off we went again.

What was your first job?

A film I made with Ismail Merchant and James Ivory in 1964/65; I got 200 rupees. I’d grown up with them. My first job in England was television. I played a Moroccan maid, having an accent with my Indian background. I really wanted a job in the theatre, but didn’t get one for a long time.

Were you hard up?

I had no money. My sister gave me some and I lived with my aunt’s family for a year in Solihull. They kept me going. My uncle slipped me £5 now and again. But there was no shopping and they knew I’d have a yogurt for lunch.

Friends from my father’s company would invite me for cauliflower cheese in London. It was heaven, the biggest meal of the week. We’d go to soup kitchens, but didn’t think it a ­hardship. I was lucky to be here, trying to get a job at all.

Are you a saver or a spender?

Spender. As a child I had my palm read in India and was told I’d have the career of a man – a lot of money will go into my hand and out like water. I’m not drawn to saving for a rainy day. I believe if you want more, you work harder.

Have you invested in property?

Only in that I’ve gone from a tiny flat to a little house, then a slightly bigger property: any security is where I’m sitting. One problem is that I’m quite badly numerologically dyslexic. If I had to write a cheque for £1,500, I’d prob­ably write it for £15,000. But I’m shrewd if I’m paying builders.

Once, shopping with a friend, I found this lovely coat and went to the till with my card. She said: “Have you any idea how much that is?” It was thousands. I’d seen hundreds.

Have you had trouble paying bills?

My father always did, and left a stream of debts. To this day, if a bill comes in, I want it paid that minute, and I get quite fearful if somebody says I haven’t paid something.

When first married and pregnant, I wasn’t able to work, nor my husband, and around 1973 we were on the dole because we had no money. I thought this won’t be forever because I’m going back to work. I have no delusions about how awful it is not to be able to pay the electricity bill.

What has been your best financial decision?

The first little house on sticks I bought for £6,000 in the late 1960s, on Hamhaugh Island in Shepperton, London, because whatever happened I had somewhere to live. It didn’t have a mortgage because you couldn’t, as it flooded every year.

It was just before we got very poor, because I wasn’t working. It passed to my first husband later in a divorce settlement. He had no financial security and wasn’t well and we were both looking after our kid; it was just after The Good Life and I was working in the theatre.

How did you manage to buy property again?

I had no money. I left the house and lived in my sister’s Chelsea flat for two years, eventually buying a workman’s cottage in Putney for £22,000.

I was working, but nobody would give a divorced single mother a mortgage. Eventually I found a mortgage broker who wangled one; my sister lent me money for the deposit.

Much later I moved to a riverside flat in Fulham that my friend was selling. By then I was doing really well. If I were a cleverer business person I’d have tried to hold on to one of the properties, but the fact that I own a house would be blasphemy to my father. To own two would be inconceivable.

What's the worst thing you've bought?

A children’s playhouse I put in the garden for the grandkids that cost thousands of pounds and they hated. A tent for £30 would have been their idea of heaven.

What's the hardest lesson you've learnt about money?

It’s like health. It feels normal when you’ve got enough and devastating when you haven’t. I believe giving something to someone who doesn’t have as much as you is important and I find meanness really upsetting.