Sheila Hancock said she refuses to ‘lumber’ her children with taking care of her in old age.
The 85-year-old actress admitted she didn’t want to ‘impose’ on her daughters having seen how her own mother had to deal with looking after two grandmothers in the same home.
Miss Hancock, who is currently performing eight times a week in the West End, also described how ageing had ‘suddenly come upon me’ and revealed how she now occasionally has to make up lines on stage when she forgets the script.
The 2002 British Academy Television Awards at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane – Sheila Hancock with her daughters Joanna and Melanie
Miss Hancock was married to actor John Thaw (right) for 29 years before his death from oesophageal cancer in 2002
Sheila Hancock said last year that the had been pumping iron at the gym after experiencing signs of muscle wastage in her arms
She said: ‘I had two grannies living with us when we were little girls and I saw what a burden it was for my mother and I wouldn’t impose that.
‘We had both in tiny houses or in the flat over the pub, because my dad worked in pubs, and it was constant rows between these old ladies and my poor mum.
How she bore it I don’t know. Your daughters they have their own lives they can’t be bothered with some boring old fart who’s baking.’
The star, who began her career in the Sixties, insisted she would never move in with a family member, and has already selected a care home in case she gets ill.
Speaking on BBC Woman’s Hour, she added: ‘I’m even looking to how if you become crippled completely you can have a little interior lift in your house. I don’t want my children to be lumbered in any way with looking after me.
‘I’m not saying my illness is going to get to that stage, but there’s always a possibility, I’m 85. Things are going to happen and start dropping off and all that.’ Miss Hancock is currently on stage at Charing Cross Theatre in the latest adaptation of the 1970s cult classic, Harold and Maude.
But she admitted to finding it difficult to remember her lines in her later years because of her fading memory.
Explaining how she had become ‘more incapacitated’ in the last 18 months, she said that she was now making up dialogue as she goes along – much to the confusion of her co-stars. She said: ‘I’m all over the place. I’m forgetting the words and making up my own version and this poor boy [co-star Bill Milner] stands there dumbfounded for a little while but always comes back with something.
The 85-year-old said she was she was determined not to ‘impose’ on her daughters when she is too frail to look after herself
The star has spoken previously about her views on death, saying people should be less ‘squeamish’ about the subject
‘It’s interesting because I climbed a mountain for a film, Edie, and that was 18 months ago and I don’t think I could do that now.
‘That’s how quickly ageing has suddenly come up on me. They didn’t think I could do it, nobody of my age had ever done it and I did it because it was a very good part mainly and there were no other actors who would even try it.’ Miss Hancock, who was married to John Thaw for 28 years, has two daughters – Melanie, 53, and Joanna, 44.
She was also stepmother to Thaw’s daughter Abigail from his first marriage. Thaw, best known as television’s Inspector Morse, died of cancer in 2002.
Miss Hancock’s first marriage to actor Alec Ross lasted 17 years before he too died of cancer in 1971.
The star has spoken previously about her views on death, saying people should be less ‘squeamish’ about the subject.