Lesley Manville grateful she wasn't an 'overnight success'

Lesley Manville is grateful that she wasn't very famous when she was younger.

In a conversation with Friends actor David Schwimmer for Interview magazine, the British actress explained that she believes her measured approach to fame comes from the fact that her career did not skyrocket overnight.

"I think it's because I was never a flavour of the month. I was never an overnight success," she said. "I started acting early, in the days when nobody thought of going to America, nobody thought of going to L.A. and doing pilot season."

"I was working pretty consistently at the Royal Court Theatre through my 20s and 30s," she continued. "Nobody thought of being famous. It just wasn't on the agenda at all."

The Phantom Thread actress went on to recall that her former husband, Slow Horses star Gary Oldman, was invited to Hollywood earlier in his career.

"When my first husband, Gary Oldman, did a couple of British films and they opened up a door for him in America, that was so unusual then. So unusual," she told David. "Whereas now, I'm so glad I wasn't certainly at the level I'm at now back then, because it's too much to maintain."

However, Lesley, 69, acknowledged that since appearing in the Netflix series The Crown as Princess Margaret, she has become more widely recognised in the U.S.

"This is the first time I've been here substantially for some years, and I have noticed the difference now," she stated. "I mean, I walked four blocks the other day and by the time I got to the fourth block, I'd been stopped six times."