Charlotte Rampling: It feels good to grow old — there’s always something new | London Evening Standard

Charlotte Rampling: It feels good to grow old — there’s always something newRampling said she has a "tremendous inner resilience" which has helped her through times of "doubt and darkness"Not worrying: Charlotte Rampling said she does not fear growing oldSerge Leblon courtesy of Harpers Bazaar

Charlotte Rampling says getting older doesn’t worry her — and that “inner resilience” has kept her going.

The actress, 71, who in 2016 received her first Oscar nomination for her role in the drama 45 Years, said: “I’m into my seventies and it’s a good feeling.

“Every time you hit a decade, as long as you don’t resist it or panic, something major happens. There’s always something else around the corner.”

Her latest film an adaptation of Julian Barnes’s novel The Sense Of An Ending. She was speaking as she took part in a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar, marking 50 years since her first with the magazine. That shoot, in 1967, took place weeks after the suicide of her sister aged 23.

Throw back: Charlotte Rampling profiled in the magazine in 1967Harpers Bazaar

Rampling said: “Looking back at it [the first shoot], I feel hopeful. I think: a lot of stuff is going to hit that girl but she’s got a great attitude.

“My attitude is what has saved me throughout my life. I’m optimistic, I believe that there will be light on the horizon.”

Through the years: Charlotte Rampling on the cover of the April issue of Harper’s BazaarSerge Leblon courtesy of Harpers Bazaar

The actress, whose father Godfrey was an Olympic sprinter and Army officer, lost her partner to illness in 2015. She said: “I’ve been through wrenching depression but I’ve somehow always known I’ll come out the other side.

Strong: Charlotte Rampling said her “inner resilience” has kept her goingSerge Leblon courtesy of Harpers Bazaar

“I’m strong, like my father, and I have a tremendous inner resilience, which has helped me through times of doubt and darkness. Life will go on, and I’ll feel again, and love again.”

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She was told her sister, Sarah, had had a brain haemorrhage but later learned she had killed herself after giving birth to a premature baby. Her late father asked her to keep this from her mother, who died in 2001.

Rampling said Sarah’s death “made me realise suicide wasn’t an option. I would have to make it to the end of my life and honour the promise to myself and to my father.”

Read the full interview in the April issue of Harper’s Bazaar, on sale now.