At the age of 16 Twiggy, a skinny cockney schoolgirl, was a cultural icon.

Her face beamed out from the covers of the world's great fashion magazines, she gazed down on us from billboards and poster sites and was hardly ever off television screens.

Twiggy was the face of the Sixties and even now ranks among the top ten faces of the 20th Century.

Real name Lesley Hornby but universally known as Twiggy, she still makes us smile.

There is something warming about that cherubic smile, something ordinary and extraordinary about that girl next door.

Later this month you can see her as she's never been seen - a rich brothelkeeper in George Bernard Shaw's morality play Mrs Warren's Profession.

She says: "Mrs Warren owns a string of brothels across Europe. She isn't just rich, she is very rich.

"She is on her annual visit to England to visit her daughter who has just graduated from Cambridge. Her relationship with her daughter is at a crucial stage.

"My character needs to tell her daughter where the money to keep her in comfort and privilege has come from and is not sure how the young girl will react.

"It is a smashing role for a woman of my years. Shaw really did have a knack of coming up with some really marvellous roles for women. He saw exactly where we were going.

I ask her if her early career as a photographic model was something of a betrayal of that movement?

"That's nonsense," she says. "Without realising it at the time I broke the mould. I was the first working-class girl to hit the big time as a model.

"When Ken Russell cast me in his film of The Boyfriend, no one from my background had ever starred in such a film.

"I think he was very brave to cast me, the money men took a long time to agree to it, but he won in the end."

Twiggy repaid him with two Golden Globe awards, for Best Actress and Most Promising Newcomer and they remain friends to this day.

She says: "He changed my life forever. He made me aware of so much I could do. As a fashion model I could possibly have worked until I was about 30 but with film experience and the ability to sing and dance I knew I could go much further."

Did that initial discovery happen all at once?

She says: "Not really, although it was pretty quick. People remarked on how good I looked, then someone got Vidal Sassoon to cut my hair, someone else to teach me make-up skills and someone wanted to take my photo.

"The next thing I knew I was on the cover of fashion magazines all over the world and being flown to Paris, Milan and New York to have my photo taken. It was a whirlwind of a thing. I left school and grew up very quickly."

Now 53, that loose-limbed gawky youngster hasn't done too badly.

Hollywood called, Broadway called and she has her own cosmetics range, a close family and a career in the theatre.

She said: "Somehow I kept my head and my feet on the ground.

"I haven't changed my accent, I put family first and I remember my dad's advice back in 1968. He told me, 'You are still our Lesley and all this is silly'.

"To be honest, I did think it was all silly. I thought everyone around me had gone mad, I was shy and pretty insecure and although I was obsessed with clothes and fashion, I wanted to design my own clothes - not model them.

"Besides, I didn't think I looked good at all. I couldn't get boyfriends when I was at school because all the boys went for big boobs and I didn't have much there at all.

"In the Sixties, models were generally much bigger. All my clothes had to be taken in. In America I lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to try to put on weight, it didn't help."

"I have enjoyed being a mum and a wife. Carly is now 24 and making a successful career as an animator. It is the sort of work I know nothing about so she cannot be compared with me."

She says: "I love Brighton and The Lanes and being by the sea."

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