She picks at an olive, ignoring the bread basket before her. “Where is home for people?” she continues. “Home is where the heart is, they say, or home is where your dogs are . . . Home to me, I thought, was where your partner is, or your loved one is, so when he died I thought, well, better think about moving. But actually it’s very difficult to shift a home. I’ve lived here for 16 years. So no change, I’m still here.”
Rampling is sanguine about the passing of time and the unkindnesses it has visited upon her. “I have a kind mirror that’s nice to me, that’s very important,” she says. “But I don’t look in other mirrors. I sometimes have to but I don’t catch myself in a glimpse. I did that once.” What did she see? “Some bad-tempered old bag,” she laughs, “whereas I’d seen myself as a goddess. Ooh, la la!”
Lunch with the FT, Charlotte Rampling, 2017