She plays the ice cold maiden so well, those piercing blue eyes and English buttoned-up demeanour becoming synonymous with the woman herself. But Jenny Seagrove couldn’t be more refreshingly honest if she tried. Katherine MacAlister meets her on the eve of her Noel Coward debut at the Oxford Playhouse Jenny Seagrove says in delight: “It is very exciting appearing in an unknown play, especially as it’s a Noel Coward.

“And because Volcano was so close to the bone, it didn’t see daylight while Coward was alive, or he wouldn’t have had any friends left.

“So this is more like a premiere,” she says of her current role, a thinly veiled biographical story based on Coward’s time of self-imposed exile in Jamaica.

“Because it’s quite incestuous and has undercurrents of homosexuality, it was just a bit too dangerous for its time and I’m sure his friends told him to put it in a drawer, which is where it stayed until he died. So it is terribly exciting to be in something like this which the audience enjoys so much. They love it,” she adds.

Ironically, as Jenny Seagrove was brought up in Malaya, presumably it has elements she can relate to?

“Oh absolutely, the whole ex-pat mentality, lots of wife-swapping and alcohol and all right there for the taking,” she laughs.

Seagrove herself was packed off to boarding school from the age of nine, as was the way.

“Yes, having to make your own bed and the terrible weather were a bit of a shock, but otherwise I think prep school was quite good for me and made me quite independent,” she says.

Something that would serve her well, considering Jenny hurtled into the fame game so early on.

“Yes, and then it all went wrong, didn’t it?” she hoots with laughter, entirely unprompted, before carrying on: “Although now I’m terribly grateful it did go so pear-shaped because I’m not sure I could have coped with Hollywood stardom.

“I remember arriving in LA after A Woman Of Substance and Local Hero and everyone wanting a piece of me, and I remember thinking ‘this is horrid, I want it to stop. I don’t want to be part of this’.”

It did stop fairly abruptly, after a few bad film choices, a very public divorce and a well-publicised romance with Michael Winner which saw her star plummet rather alarmingly.

“Yes, it was never my work, but my private life. And eventually you have to turn round and say ‘this is what happened, now just shut up about it’, to stop them making things up,” she shrugs.

“And then when everything does stop you don’t know what to do with yourself. You feel abandoned. So I just kept going, even if my career had slowed right down. And I’ve always worked. It just meant I didn't make films any more,” she says.

So instead of coming home and licking her wounds, Jenny launched a very respectable TV career with a seven-year stint as barrister Jo Mills in the BBC series Judge John Deed and an almost permanent stage presence, which means she now has a CV she’s hugely proud of.

“I have a lovely life and a great relationship (with theatrical producer Bill Kenwright). I’m starring in Volcano, do my TV work, I’m directing three other films, I run a charity and so life is always very hectic,” she says.

“But I have a career I love and I wouldn’t have had that if I’d gone stratesphoric.

“And Volcano is a really interesting piece of work because it’s not nice and frothy but has a dark underbelly, while being terribly witty with it. So I’m enjoying doing my theatre which is where I’m most at home because that’s where I’m in control.

“And I try to be a positive person and always enjoy where I am and what I’m doing because in the end acting is just a gypsy’s career.”

* Noel Coward’s Volcano, starring Jenny Seagrove, Dawn Steele and Jason Durr, plays at Oxford Playhouse from Monday. Call the box office on 01865 305305