Saying she takes after her mother Ruth – who she remembers doing the housework in the nude - she said she always wanted to be different, unlike her ‘deeply conventional’ GP father. ‘He wanted to merge imperceptibly into the background,’ she says. ‘I have never wanted that.’
She added: "I think gay people are very lucky, because we are not conventional, we are a group slightly apart. It gives us an edge. We’re good artists, we’re good musicians. And I like being gay. I wouldn’t want to be straight for anything."
But she said her parents never accepted her sexuality – with her mother making her swear on the Torah that she would never have sex with another woman after she came out. She also reveals sadly that she wished she’d never come out to her parents because it hurt them.
The actress, who is in a long-term relationship with academic Heather Sutherland, has become a star more for her character than her thespian work in recent years, taking part in a number of reality shows and hosting travelogues. Her autobiography This Much is True sold three million copies and a follow-up, which she reveals she was paid £250,000 for is out later this year.
Like the first, it will be filled with her adventures of sex, nudity, farts, and eating raw onions (in the accompanying video she reveals how she always carries one in her handbag). ‘It’s a strong position if you’re not afraid to be who you are,’ she says. ‘We’re all so insecure. People are frightened such a lot of the time and what I’ve always tried to do it make people feel more relaxed, make people feel good about themselves, and just try and lessen the torture for people a bit.’
The actress reveals that she is due to have a heart operation to have a stent fitted admitting, "I think about death a lot. Every morning when I get up, I think, 'Hmmm, another day,' which maybe I wasn’t expecting."
An outspoken critic of Israel, and a fan of Jeremy Corbyn, the actress said her next plan is to make a documentary about Israel and Palestine but she admits: "They’re afraid to let me out there in case I get murdered by somebody, and nobody’s quite sure whether I’ll be murdered by the Jews or the Palestinians."
