Ian Fleming died just two years later, and now his estate is managed by Lucy and Kate. She’s excited about the forthcoming Amazon reboot and the team that has been assembled: producers David Hayman and Amy Pascal, director Denis Villeneuve and writer Steven Knight. “I think they’re approaching it in a wonderful way,” she says. “It’s an exciting new start and a challenge for them.”
If she knows who’s going to be the next Bond, she’s not saying, though she seems like a woman sitting on a secret. “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” she chuckles, keeping her counsel.
Fleming was drawn to acting when she was 11, after seeing her mother in the play The Flower and the Cherry with Ralph Richardson. “I was standing in the wings, watching the show and I got absolutely intrigued by the animal that was the audience,” she says. “And Mum on stage doing things and being things – that’s when I got hooked, really. I did plays at school and then I said to my parents that I wanted to act. They hadn’t pushed me in any way, but they were both very pleased.”
Aged 16, she spent three months in New Zealand, looking after the son of the governor-general at the time, Bernard Fergusson, which was “great fun”. Then, in the summer of 1964, she returned home and went into repertory theatre after failing to get into Rada and Lamda. From there, she joined the Royal Court. “It was the Sixties, everything was happening. I don’t think I was very swinging, though. I was rather naive. I went out with Tom Courtenay for a bit, and that was lovely. He’s still a friend.”
She did bits on television, including The Avengers, and the horror film Rasputin: The Mad Monk with Christopher Lee, but mainly stuck to theatre, working with people such as Ian McKellen. However, she says her family connections did not necessarily work to her advantage.
“It’s quite difficult, in a way, because they want you to be as good as your mother, and you’re not. Well, you’re different, and probably when you start, not nearly as good. And maybe never as good. It helped to get you seen but didn’t necessarily help get you the job.”