For Farrell, there's nothing like a dame

May 5, 2005 - 12:44PM
Farrell ... cheered up Dame Eileen "fantastically".

Farrell ... cheered up Dame Eileen "fantastically".

She may be 42 years his senior, but 70-year-old actress Dame Eileen Atkins spent more than two hours resisting an attempt by Colin Farrell to seduce her.

The Gosford Park actress and co-creator of the drama Upstairs Downstairs was propositioned by the Hollywood star in her hotel room just a few months ago.

Dame Eileen told the UK's ITV chat show Loose Women: "I was doing a movie, and three weeks before my 70th birthday, a simply stunningly gorgeous big film star, aged 28 years old, came into my hotel room for sex without strings.

"Yes, I spent two-and-a-half hours saying no. It was pure bliss, and it made me sail through my 70th birthday without a care in the world."

Asked if she was tempted, the actress, who is married to second husband film producer Bill Shepherd, replied: "Of course I was! But I just kept saying, this is deeply inappropriate."

She added: "It cheered me up fantastically. I said no in the end because he said 'You won't do it because your body isn't as good as it was when you were young, isn't it? That's why you're saying no'.

"He said 'I don't care about that, I don't care', but that was why, because I'm too proud of how I looked when I was younger."

The Vanity Fair and Cold Mountain actress, who is currently starring in a revival of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party in the West End, said: "The body is still the same weight, but it's all distributed in a different way."

Dame Eileen did not name the Irish heart-throb, who is said to have dated Angelina Jolie and Britney Spears.



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