Shirley MacLaine: the new dame in Downton Shirley MacLaine is about to join the hit series Downton Abbey. She tells Emma Brockes about money, men and why the cast were too afraid to ask her for Hollywood gossip GUARDIAN

Emma Brockes

guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 August 2012 18.01 EDT

Shirley MacLaine comes to the door in slippers and a tracksuit, clutching a fistful of hair and looking, at 78, like an only slightly older version of those famous 1960s roles of hers: gleeful, sharp-eyed, almost confrontationally scatty. We're at her pied-à-terre in Malibu – she lives most of the time on a ranch in New Mexico – a bungalow overlooking the ocean in a secure development popular with celebrities, she says, because of the anonymity; although, when she calls me a cab at the end of the interview, she says blithely down the phone, "Hello, it's Shirley MacLaine", then stands in the driveway, eating a cracker and waving at the driver as he turns in the drive.

This autumn, MacLaine appears opposite Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, the kind of shark versus bear pairing TV execs only dream about and that, for incongruity, is right up there with the time Liz Taylor appeared in a Miss Marple. MacLaine will play Martha Levinson, Lady Cora's mother, sweeping in from New York to upset the household. Or, as MacLaine puts it as we sit down in her living room, "My character is not crass, but more emotionally democratic than the English. She goes over there to say, 'Rethink your attitudes about tradition!'" She has known Dame Maggie for almost 40 years and what a delight it is, she says, to sit around on set all day, "two senior citizens", gossiping. There was one particular scene, a wedding in a church… hang on, who gets married?!

"Oh, I forget now." (MacLaine has the actor's habit of total amnesia concerning scenes she's not central to.)

"But Maggie and I are there in the scene. And we don't like to get up from our chairs; we just sit. And we must have sat for seven hours in this church. Just talking, talking."

What about?

"Men. Health. Hair." Pause. "One of her friends – I don't want to say who – one very famous friend of hers, has found a new lover."

Oh my God, is it Dench?

It's not Dench. How old is this person?

"A hundred and twenty. And we both wondered how this was possible. We're both divorced, so we talked about that. We talked about if we want a man in our lives again."

And?

"I don't want to share that." She thinks for a moment. "Put it this way: if a good-looking, elderly man had walked in just then... we would have still stayed there talking." MacLaine explodes with dirty laughter.

Above all, one is warned of her waspishness. Early on in our encounter, MacLaine says something mildly interesting about Downton – how the English cast members were too afraid to ask her any questions about Hollywood, although they obviously wanted to – news I receive, as one does in interviews, as if it is the most fascinating thing I have ever heard, putting my hand in front of my mouth in stark amazement. MacLaine drops the story and stares coldly at me.

"Poor dear," she says. "You're suffering.

"No, I was just…"

"Hmm-mm." She is not interested in tolerating a rival performance.

To this end, the thing she values most in life, she says, is honesty, for pragmatic as well as for moral reasons: the only way to be famous and not go mad, says MacLaine, is to hide in plain sight; to undermine the illusion of celebrity before anyone else can. This is both an honest approach and a contrivance to give the impression of honesty. MacLaine has been doing this a very long time.

So anyway, Downton. "They were gobsmacked," she says of the English cast. (MacLaine has picked up some British vernacular. To wit: "They don't understand what a frigging hit they are!")

In one scene, they all sat around the table between takes stealing glances at her. "They wanted to hear about Frank [Sinatra] and they wanted to hear about all my love affairs and Billy Wilder and all of that. But they never asked."

They were shy.

"No," she says firmly. "It's a question of etiquette. It's a question of don't pry. A lot of people have that reaction to me. Until they meet me and then they see, shit, I'll talk about anything."

I would quite like to keep her off Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and the Rolodex of old lag stories rolled out every time she is written about. Has it ever occurred to her that if she was British, she'd be Dame Shirley by now? MacLaine hoots with laughter. "I was thinking about that! Do I have to be British?"

I think so; Canadian at a pinch. (MacLaine's mother was Canadian). I don't think you can be knighted if you're American.

"No, Elton John is knighted!"

He's British.

"Oh, of course he is. Well, that's too bad."


READ MORE OF THE INTERVIEW: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/aug/24/shirley-maclaine-downton-abbey?newsfeed=true