Aside from the fact she’s starred in two Harry Potter movies, punched Arnold Schwarzenegger, worked with Baz Luhrmann and Martin Scorsese, won a BAFTA, and recorded a soft porn audio book, Margolyes doesn’t subscribe to the idea of being like a regular old person, whatever that may be.

The evidence of this can be seen in her one-woman stage play The Importance Of Being Miriam, which she is bringing to the Lighthouse Theatre in Warrnambool tomorrow night.

“What I say to people is that if they don’t like me, they won’t like the show,” she says with typical bluntness.

“I didn’t put it together — Peter Adams did.

“He’s done the same thing for Michael Palin, Julie Andrews and David Attenborough.

“He’s the specialist for concocting personal shows for people. He came round and we talked — or rather, he sat and listened while I talked for a whole day — and he fashioned a show and we tweaked it together.

“Originally it wasn’t going to be about my life, it was going to be about literature, but that was not interesting enough.

“He said ‘people want something a bit more personal’.

“Some of the stuff in it is extremely personal.”

Margolyes chuckled as she explained that there were some bad language and some sexually-explicit stories in the show.

“A lot of old people come to my show because I’m old and they come to support their own, but I love seeing some of them go stiff with horror at some of the language in the play,” she laughed.

“But they get over it. A lot of it’s for fun — it’s not gratuitous. All over 70s love to talk about sex — we talk about it because we can’t get it any more!”

Which brings us to the soft porn audio book called Sexy Sonia: Leaves from my Schoolgirl Notebook.

“Oh wow, I must have been 25 or 26 when I did that — that was 50 years ago ... all the people who wanked to it must be dead by now!” she exclaimed.

Margolyes promises laughter, tears and music — she’s joined on stage by pianist John Martin — in the show, which she been touring for the last three months.

“Warr-nambool is the last show but one,” she said.

“I love touring and I love to travel, but I’m getting old and it’s less easy than it used to be.

“I wouldn’t say never again, but I certainly won’t (tour) for such long periods again.”

When Margolyes finishes the tour, she’ll return to one of her three houses (Tuscany, South London and NSW central coast) and rest up before diving into her next project.

What that may be is anyone’s guess given the diversity of her CV, which also makes it interesting when she talks to fans after her show.

“I recorded the Matilda talking book and somebody came up to me and said ‘you’re the voice I grew up to’,” she said when asked where most of her fans come from.

“Someone else will say Black Adder. A lot of men will say Monkey Magic, or End Of Days, which I did with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“But everywhere I go, people say Harry Potter,” she said.

The Importance Of Being Miriam is on at the Lighthouse Theatre on tomorrow night from 8pm.