Joanna Lumley health: Absolutely Fabulous star laid bare ‘complete nervous breakdown’ | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV

The famed actress stars in Channel 5 documentary The Big Freeze: Winter ‘63, revisiting the time when snow began falling on Boxing Day 1962 and barely stopped for 10 weeks. Charlie Clay’s feature-length programme details a period which saw temperatures plummet, major sport events cancelled and the rivers freeze over. While the documentary sees TV weatherman John Kettley explain the science behind the UK’s coldest winter recorded in over 200 years, it also includes first-hand accounts from stars including John Craven, Pete Waterman and Ms Lumley.

Ms Lumley details her experience of being snowed in at her Kent boarding school as temperatures plummeted to minus 22°C.

The much-loved actress is best known for her role as Patsy Stone in BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, for which she has received two Bafta awards.

Ms Lumley had previously made her name in the Seventies and Eighties by starring in The New Avengers and Sapphire & Steel.

While she is characterised by her iconic breathy voice and quick wit, she once admitted to having suffered from a “nervous breakdown” in her twenties.

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It resulted in a young Ms Lumley taking a six-month break from work, during which she had regular panic attacks. 

She told the Times in 2016: “It was six months. It was a complete nervous breakdown.

“I was off for six months. I was pretty badly shaken up. 

“My nerves were gone. I didn’t dare go to the shops.

“And I thought, ‘I’ve got to get out of this, how do I?’”

The actress had previously spoken frankly about the mental health battle that plagued her twenties, explaining that she once even hallucinated “snipers” aiming guns at her while on stage in 1971.

Ms Lumley moved in with her parents to recover, and in that six-month period she began to take a new approach to the negative thoughts she was experiencing. 

In the Times interview, she added: “To try to make myself go out to shops to buy food I would imagine the worst thing that could happen at each stage.

“If I fell over on the floor, what would happen? Always the same answer came back into my head. Someone will help you up.”

Ms Lumley admitted two years later that she still occasionally suffered from depression and was susceptible to “feeling lousy for two or three months”.

The actor explained on the Jonathan Ross Show: “Occasionally I get eclipsed by sadness or depression, the black dog on your shoulder, and feel lousy for two or three months.

“And then one morning everything’s thrilling again.”

Beyond her television and film work Ms Lumley is a passionate human rights activist for Survival International and the Gurkha Justice Campaign, while she also supports a number of charities and animal welfare groups. 

The actor was made a Dame in the 2022 New Year Honours for her services to drama, entertainment and charity.

Watch Channel 5 documentary The Big Freeze: Winter ‘63 tonight at 9pm.