Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley, DBE, FRGS, is a British actress, voice artist, author, and former model, who is best known for her role as Patsy Stone in the BBC1 sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (1992–2012). She also received a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for the Broadway revival of La Bête.
For Disney, she portrayed Aunt Spiker in the 1996 live-action/stop-motion film James and the Giant Peach, Half Tusk in the 2000 film Whispers: An Elephant's Tale, and Dame Olga in the 2004 Miramax film Ella Enchanted (although not technically a Disney film).
Lumley was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, in British India. Her mother, Thyra Beatrice Rose (née Weir), was English. Her grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Weir, had been born in Ghazipur and served as an army officer in Kashmir; he was a close friend of the 13th Dalai Lama. Her father, Major James Rutherford Lumley, was born in Lahore (now part of Pakistan) with Scottish and English ancestry. He was a direct descendant of Major Genral Sir James Rutherford Lumley and himself served as an officer in the British Indian Army's 6th Queen Elizabeth's Own Gurkha Rifles in Burma during World War II, most notably at the Battle of Mogaung. His life was saved by Tul Bahadur Pun. Lumley's parents married in 1941. She has early memories of living in the tropics.
From age 11 to 17, she attended Holmhurst St. Mary's Convent School, the Ridge, run by the Community of the Holy Family:
| “ | I especially loved my second boarding school, an Anglo-Catholic convent in the hills behind Hastings. The nuns wore blue stockings and were brainy and lovely. There were 70 boarders and I was happy as a clam. | ” |
