Felicity Kendal has warned being stalked “goes with the territory” for celebrities – saying of those who find it traumatic: “Don’t be an actress then.”

The Good Life star, 72, was followed home by a “few stalkers” earlier in her career.

But she told The Observer Magazine: “I think everybody did in those days. It was just a couple of people who came to every show and then they followed me home and they were always outside my house.

“It wasn’t serious, though. One of them was quite a sweet guy. Perhaps he was just lonely.”

Felicity Kendal
Felicity Kendal (Ian West/PA)

And she said: “Some people might be traumatised by that, but I think: ‘Well, don’t be an actress then.’ It goes with the territory to an extent.”

She added: “Obviously there are limits beyond which it’s frightening and terrible.

“You don’t want to be shot and you don’t want to be dragged into the bushes, but I think you instinctively know as a human being what the threshold is.”

The actress also told how she smashed objects in the house during her marriage to Michael Rudman.

She and the theatre director are now back together but the pair have not remarried.

“When we were married for the first time, I struggled with my temper,” Kendal said.

“What I loved most was to throw things round the house – jugs, mugs, anything.

“I once threw a cup and saucer through the window of the ground-floor flat we were living in and the following morning there was a ring on the doorbell and the porter, looking at the hole in our window, came back with all the little bits and said ‘I think these must be yours’.”

“Luckily, Michael has very quick reactions so I never hit him,” she told the magazine.