Alive and kicking | 10 April 2010

Marianne Gray talks to Debbie Reynolds, one of the last of Hollywood’s Golden Era

Debbie Reynolds is the first to admit she’s no longer Tammy. At 78, she’s more like the Unsinkable Molly Brown as she tours Britain this month in her one-woman show, Alive and Fabulous.

‘You people in England probably think I died years ago but I’m still kicking,’ she says, laughing. ‘I know that a lot of young people don’t know who I am unless they’ve noticed me as Grace’s mother, Bobbi Adler, in the sitcom Will & Grace, but I’ve never stopped working. I’m an Aries and it’s in my nature to be a performer.

‘I’ve worked for 62 years and the only change is that nowadays I only do one show a day, not two or three like I did in the old days,’ she tells me. ‘I’d wither away and die if I wasn’t working. When I kick the bucket they’re going to stuff me like Trigger [Roy Rogers’s horse] and put me in a museum.