Botox at 86? No, says Susan Hampshire, I just stick a plaster on my forehead to pull the skin up!

Stars of the silver screen often defy their years with a little help from a top-up of Botox – or even the surgeon’s knife.

But showbiz veteran Susan Hampshire, 86, proves the tricks of the trade can be as simple as a strip of Elastoplast to the forehead.

The triple Emmy-winner, who starred in hit TV series such as The Forsyte Saga and Monarch Of The Glen, revealed her cheeky trick during an interview for the Talking Pictures TV Festival.

She even showed off her forehead to co-hosts Mike Read and Caroline Munro as well as the live audience in St Albans.

She explained: ‘I’m growing old at quite a fast rate, and in order to keep my eyes from dropping down so I can’t see out of them, I have to use Elastoplast to pull up my forehead.

‘I wouldn’t ever dream of using Botox or anything like that.’ Susan also revealed to ‘religiously’ stuffing cotton wool in her mouth while in front of the cameras – including for 1964 movie Wonderful Life, in which she starred alongside Cliff Richard – to soften her ‘strong mouth and nose lines’.

She added: ‘It makes your lips look prettier, too. So that’s why I did it. I don’t bother any more, it’s too late obviously, but I did do it religiously.

‘Better than cotton wool is a little sponge. There are very soft sponges – natural sponges from the sea – and you cut those into fine little things.’

London-born Susan, who was married to her second husband – theatre impresario Sir Eddie Kulukundis – from 1981 until his death in 2021, warned against resorting to plastic surgery to conceal any imperfections.

She said: ‘There are lots of tricks without doing anything like a facelift or something that puts poison in your body – don’t do any of those things.

‘I think there are lots of things you can do just to make yourself look healthy.

‘I’ve not got the cotton in my cheeks today, but if I had, my cheeks would have been fuller.

‘The rest is make-up – I couldn’t do without that. Oh, and I dye my hair.’

Otherwise, the actress credited her impressive appearance to ‘good diet and good genes’.

‘It’s not a time machine,’ she added. ‘It’s my mum’s genes.’