In her own words, Sally Thomsett tells us about her favourite picture, which was taken on the set of the much-loved kids' film watched by millions...
This was taken in the summer of 1970 when we were filming The Railway Children.
The director Lionel Jeffries is with Gary Warren (Peter), Jenny Agutter (Bobbie) and me (Phyllis) in the Edwardian London house seen at the start of the film which, if I remember rightly, was filmed at Elstree Studios.
Peter is given a toy train engine for his 10th birthday and Lionel was probably explaining how the toy train will go bang when it gets to the end of the track. There weren’t any rehearsals, really, we just kept doing the scenes until they were perfect.
Photos like this bring back happy memories of the classic family film which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, when I myself turn 70 [this month].
Its famously emotional scene is the one in which Bobbie is reunited with their long-lost father on the railway platform, but it’s never brought a lump to my throat. I’m not sentimental. It was just a job.
I was born in 1950 in Plumpton, East Sussex, and raised in nearby Brighton and Hove, but I wasn’t from a showbiz family.
My father, Maurice, was in the car repair business and my mother Dorothy (known as Sally) did bits and pieces. During a brief spell at ‘proper’ school, I told the headmaster I wanted to be a chef – but I still can’t cook to save my life.
Persuaded by the eldest of my three brothers, I started performing on stage at 11. Soon I was regularly working on telly, especially in the police series Dixon Of Dock Green, Z-Cars and Softly, Softly, and did two movies for the Children’s Film Foundation.
Attending Phildene Stage School in London was supposed to give me a break, as well as training, but I often got sidetracked shopping.
Phyllis in The Railway Children was supposed to be 11, yet I was 20 then. While you might imagine my adult chest could have given my true age away, it didn’t because my costume was a yoke-neck dress which went straight out from underneath the shoulders with lots of petticoats underneath.
I wore short skirts in real life but a year later, when I was in the psychological thriller Straw Dogs, the director Sam Peckinpah insisted the grey skirt I wore as Janice be lengthened so the viewers wouldn’t be distracted from the star, Susan George.
I never went naked onstage or on screen. I felt if I’m good enough to do this, I don’t need to take my clothes off to get hired. So if there was any nudity involved, my agent wouldn’t put me up for it.
But when Paula Wilcox and I played single women sharing a flat in the ITV sitcom Man About The House from 1973 to 1976, we were seen in bikinis.
In the 70s, I was also in the movie Baxter! and adverts ranging from Bovril to Alka-Seltzer. I bought a two-bedroom penthouse in central London, which I still live in, and I bought cars including a Bentley, a Rolls-Royce, a Mercedes, a Ferrari and all the Lotuses – but only one at a time.
My last screen credit was a Wodehouse Playhouse episode in 1978, though I’ve been in about 20 stage shows since, including pantomimes.
In the early 80s I travelled the world, and after my daughter Charlotte was born in 1996 I took time out to raise her. I’m very happy with the work I’ve done.
Gary Warren hasn’t been seen on screen since the late 70s. He left show business and went to Canada, though we have been in touch on Twitter.
Jenny Agutter and I have met at various events over the years and maybe we will all get together for the 50th anniversary later this year, though I’m not yet aware of any plans for another reunion.’
– The 50th anniversary of The Railway Children is due to be celebrated in August at Oakworth Station in Yorkshire, one of the filming locations.
