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After spending a million dollars each, they eventually agreed to a pre-trial settlement and joint custody, but only after Lesley-Anne had been vetted by a team of shrinks.She says the shrinks ultimately declared her “a super-intelligent woman” which, she adds, “was very funny, because I lied to them every step of the way They did these Rorschach tests on me You know, the ink-blots. And they’d say, what does this one look like? I wasn’t about to say it looks like two women having it off, was I? So I said, `Ohhh, it’s a beautiful butterfly.”‘ What did they conclude about you emotionally? “That I’m a complete hysteric!” And she might be, although perhaps not dangerously so Certainly, she doesn’t seem entirely whole somehow. I think she is intelligent, yes, but am not sure she’s entirely all there.She was born in Wandsworth, south London. Her father, James, apparently a very dashing-looking man, was caretaker of the local Territorial Army Centre.

Her mother, Isobel, stayed at home to bring up the two girls, although did a bit of cleaning on the side when things got tight Lesley- Anne, however, craved a more colourful life. “I had these cousins in LA, who’d send us care packages of clothes they’d grown out of – the most amazingly beautiful dresses that were totally alien to, say, going to Clark’s for another pair of lace-ups in black, black or black. So I always had this desire, and image of myself, leading this fantasy life.”She started modelling at 10, was drinking gin and orange and clubbing at 12, started appearing nude in films at 14, and was living with Bruce at 15 I ask her if she thinks her childhood finished too early She says. “I don’t think it ever started!” What do you mean? “I just never felt like a child I always had this desire to be a grown-up I never had friends I never felt I belonged. I was always happiest on my own, inventing things, finding secret places. If I’d also mutilated small animals, I think I’d have the perfect psychological profile of a serial killer.” Did you ever, for example, have birthday parties? “Perhaps once.

Although, then again, I might just be jealously appropriating someone else’s.” Did you like school? “Hated it. In particular, I hated Miss Harden, the maths teacher, who had hairy armpits and never wore long sleeves.”The trouble with Lesley-Anne, perhaps, is that she focused for so long on achieving things outwardly, via her own admittedly fabulous looks, that something within her just shrivelled and died. When, later, I ask her what attracted her to Friedkin, she says: “Money, talent, power.” And you find those things attractive? “I did then. I’d met men with one or other of those things but, until Bill, I’d never met a man with all three.” And the combination was lethal? “Lethal is the right word. That man was MERCURY IN MY BLOOD!” She can seem quite hysterical at times, yes.Her first modelling assignment was for school uniforms, then it was bonnets, then it was a commercial in Barbados for an American soap powder – “and I thought, this is the life” She hooked up with Bruce at a party thrown by Ava Gardner “He walked into the room in a white coat I was in love.