Greta Scacchi

Disarmingly unpretentious, Greta Scacchi came across as distinctly down to earth and unstarry when she visited Scarborough to give readings at the former Victorian prison, as part of the literature festival Books by the Beach. Wearing no make-up or jewellery, the 54-year-old actor was on her first visit to the town. Interviewed by festival co-organiser Peter Gutteridge, she said she had learned all she needed to know about sex by watching Alan Bates and Julie Christie in a haystack scene in The Go-Between; and that she had told auteur Robert Altman that she was afraid of being pigeonholed as an actor who takes her clothes off.