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Miriam Margolyes has said she worries she may not have enough money for health and medical support as she gets older.
The 83-year-old underwent major heart surgery to replace her aortic valve last year, and shared the financial concerns that emerged when she began “failing physically”, in an interview with Radio Times.
“I’m worried that I won’t have enough money for carers when I finally get paralysed or whatever it is that’s going to happen to me,” she said.
“I’m saving up cash so that I can pay people to look after me and my partner. We don’t have children, so I need to make sure I’m going to be looked after in the way that I’ve become accustomed.”
Margolyes has been in a relationship with her partner and retired professor Heather Sutherland since 1968, and the pair do not have any children. She has earned £365,000 on Cameo, a platform for celebrities to record personalised messages for fans, since Covid, and confirmed she earned £250,000 for her recent memoir, This Much is True.
The Harry Potter star also shared her reservations about appearing on a mobility scooter following her deteriorating health, in her latest BBC Two travel series, Miriam Margolyes: A New Australian Adventure.
“When I started kind of failing physically, I remember saying to directors and producers, please don’t show me clambering out of a car or climbing upstairs on my hands and knees.
“I didn’t want people to see that because I was embarrassed to see myself looking so pathetic.
“But, subsequently, I’ve met loads of people who have said I gave them the courage to do things that they never thought they could. So I’m very pleased about that.”
Speaking about her thoughts on her mortality and eventual death, the star said, “I’m always quoting William Saroyan, who says: ‘I know that everyone has to die, but I thought an exception might be made in my case.’
“I know now that is definitely not true. What do I think happens after death? My therapist used to say there may be a party. I honestly don’t think there’s anything, I think you just stop, but it would be nice if there’s a party.”
Earlier this year, the actor shocked viewers when she swore live on Loose Women when asked, “Can they pay you to do anything, Miriam?”
Margolyes responded that she wouldn’t eat “s***”, later censoring herself to say, “I wouldn’t eat faeces”.
