Films of all time, the musical Singin In The Rain. For a staggering six decades she has been a big name in show business and she is here in londons west end, treading the boards again. Her life, however, has been touched by scandal and hollywood has changed dramatically in the years she has been involved. Our guest today is Debbie Reynolds. Debbie reynolds, welcome to hardtalk. Why are you still so driven to carry on performing . If i wasnt, if i was not having a wonderful time i would be bored to death and i would be sitting at home and i would not know what to do with myself. I have always been busy and active and home in the states i travel 42 weeks a year and that is just constant. Ive never stopped working since i was 16. It isjust like, i am used to it. I get quite nervous if, lets say i had a two week vacation, then i am nervous. I must keep busy. When you started at 16 years old, could you have imagined you would still be doing it at 78 . No, i thought id most probably be dead. Thats why they named the tour alive. Alive and fabulous. When they called me they said, debbie, what should we name the tour . I said i did not really know but some people say Debbie Reynolds, is she still alive . So then they went with that. 0k, we will call the tour alive and fabulous, they added fabulous. And when people see me they will see i am. You say you are very driven but it is more than that, isnt it . You have to do this financially. It has not been an easy life for you financially. When i say driven, it is what you want to do. Do i have to work . Yes. Everybody has to work. There are always bills. I raised five children. They all went to university and they always had a mother who worked. They had the cars, colleges, you know. I think all parents work. Dont they . Especially if they have a divorce. That is the thing. Your third husband left you bankrupt, didnt he . The second one left me bankrupt. The third husband, he didnt leave me bankrupt, hejust left with all the money. That must be very difficult, because as a Hollywood Star you had amassed a huge amount of money until your second and third marriages. I know, but husbands spent a lot of money. I could shop all day on what they spend. Do you regret that you trusted your husbands so much financially and in the end itjust didnt work out that for one reason or another, in the case your second husband, he gambled a lot, didnt he . The third husband, the Hotel Complex investment that didnt work out . As a woman, i must answer you really honestly. When you fall in love you dont really ask, is the man in love with me . You really think that he is. Otherwise you would not get married. You just really do believe. Im rather victorian and i think that if a man says, i love you, debbie, and i want to be with you for the rest of my life, you must believe him, or you wouldnt marry him. Im not a complete fool until after the fact. But then i was. Yes, i have been married three times. Twice, the second one went bankrupt and the third one went bankrupt but he didnt get everything. He took all the money and ran but he did not get everything. And i have great resilience, you know . They dont tackle me on the way out, theyjust leave me fallen like a good punch. Back in 1988, though, it all looked different, didnt it . You were quoted as saying two more years than you would have enough money to retire. That was prior to the marriage crumbling and leaving you penniless again. I always say you can make it back. I give myself not really a two year period, a five year plan. I always say there is a light at end of the tunnel, so i can get through, because if there is a tunnel there is a light. So i can make it. I never give up. What did bankruptcy mean for you, though . How did it affect you . It means the government gets all the money. What does bankruptcy mean to me . It is a big setback but you didnt do it, your husband does it. And in california, its california taxes, Community Property so the government steps in and you have to pay back what your husband owes. Some people say, how this could happen . We always hear the stories about Hollywood Stars with people to protect their business interests. You have got the impression there is someone doing everything for them. But clearly there is not . No, there is often someone stupid like me. So you didnt get advice . I had great lawyers and they advised me to always get a promissory note, which i did, but that does not hold up in bankruptcy court. Somehow theres a different thing in Community Property. So, they win. And you are still working as a result of that . The good fortune that i had was to be in show business. In show business if people care about you and if you have a good show and you work hard your entire life and you have learnt to sing and dance and do mimicry and just be good at your craft, people want to come and see you. Cast your mind back to those early days when you were first discovered at the age of 16. Mh hm. What did it feel like to be on the verge of a hollywood career . Well, who knew that . I was 16 and in school. Ijoined local Beauty Contests for fun because they gave away a free blouse and scarf. Thats why you did it . Because you thought you might win a free scarf . Well, i mean, a silk scarf. I never had a silk scarf. Or a beautiful blouse. Did you want to be an actress . No. No one in my family was in show business and i wanted to be a gym teacher. I was working hard because i wanted to go to college and i could go if i got a scholarship. So i kept my grades up and that is what i wanted to do, and thats what i hoped to be. A local, you know. But they had this local contest in burbank and i won the contest. There was a talent scout there and they took me to Warner Brothers and they did a screen test and they asked me why i wanted to be in the movies and i said, i dont. That must have been a bit surprised by that, because every young girl in those days wanted to be an actress. Especially in california. I truly had no thought about it. I loved to go to the movies but why would you think you would be in the movies . I mean, it is one thing to go and to see movie stars but why where in the why would you think you were ever going to be there . If no one in your family was, if you were not exposed to it at all, i had no dream of that. So then, all of a sudden, i guess, they thought i was so crazy that i would fit into show business. You have to be a little crazy to be in show business. I have decided that. You came from a poor background. Not an easy background. My family were poor. We have enough food on the table but my father did not make much money. He worked for the railroad and there was very little to go around. We didnt have furniture. We had a little home my daddy built and i cant say that we knew we were poor, because Everybody Else was poor. So there was no one to, like, guide you to say, 0h, dont you feel terrible . We did not feel that we were different than anybody else because everybody was poor. You have made some fantastic films, i mean, the unsinkable molly brown, How The West Was Won and the one i suppose that sticks in everybodys mind, Singin In The Rain with gene kelly. A fantastic musical. When you are making it at the time did you think it was going to be a great film that people would remember for decades afterwards . Well, i no, i wouldnt know that because i was just a little girl. I was only 17, they put me in the picture and i had never danced and then the head of the studio said gene, this is Debbie Reynolds. Mary frances was my real name. So this is debbie. They changed to debbie. They said she will be your new leading lady. Gene said, really . Do you dance . Isaid, well, no. And im sure he was aghast. And there are complicated dance scenes in that movie, arent there . Id say. As tough as you could get. How did you tackle it . They asked if i could do the time step. And i could. And then he asked can you do the maxie ford . And i said i dont have a car. Because a maxie ford. Is a dance step. So then gene knew he was dead, that he had to teach me how to dance. So i did and i worked like a dog. I had five different teachers and in six months they prepared me to work and i worked really hard because hes a taskmaster and a great dancer and this was his idea. And gene kelly and fred astaire and stanley donen, they were the creators. Donald oconnor could dance to drop dead. His family were all from the circus, you know. He was great. He could run up the wall around backwards. They say he was taskmaster and some people say he was tough on you. Not always very nice to you. No, no, he was tough. Youve got the right idea. Did he shout at you . He had a microphone and he used to yell at me. Gene kelly . He had a microphone and he used to yell at you . He would tell me smile, be bigger, be louder. He was always coaching. You were his Love Interest in the movie and you fought off i suppose quite a lot of other actresses who were in the frame to get the role originally. People like leslie caron and judy garland and in the end it was the unknown, Debbie Reynolds. Well, i did suit the role. It was supposed to be an innocent virginal little girl and i was that, but i think it was a tough deal for poor gene to be stuck with me who had never danced. It would have been far better for him to have a great dancer, but i worked so hard that i think in the end, when i look at the performance of that little girl, i think i did a good job. It must have been a fantastic time in many ways in the 1950s. You were also hanging out with Frank Sinatra and the rat pack, a great partying mob, and there were you with your innocent little girl image. How did you fit in with the rat pack, who were going off having all these wild times . I was not having a wild time when i started. I was just a teenager. But then i did my first nightclub act and i did a movie with Frank Sinatra called a tender trap. He adopted me like a little sister and he is the one who advised me never marry a singer. And you did in the end. Yourfirst husband was eddie fisher, probably One Of The Best known singers of that time. A massive star in the 1950s. 20 gold records. Well, why should i start out right . Why didnt you listen to Frank Sinatra . That marriage ended in disaster, in the end, of course, after eddie fisher had run off with Elizabeth Taylor. But, you see, i make all these mistakes. I did wrong the first time, i did wrong the second time and then the third time. Then i called myself out. Your daughter Carrie Fisher said that she thought the courtship between you and eddie fisher was a press release, that what carrie said. They were riding the wave of being a media couple more than having any real compatibility. She said you probably didnt have much in common with eddie fisher. Well, probably, but i did not know that. I was in love, young love. What did i know about love . I really didnt know anything. I thought it was terrific. He was darling, he was handsome, he was a wonderful looking fellow and a star, and here i was a young star and. Quite a scandal when he ran off with one of the worlds best known actresses, Elizabeth Taylor. Yes, elizabeth. We went to School Together at the mgm lot. We were good friends. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. I certainly was not. And the most sexual woman. I certainly was not. You said you could see why eddie fisher wanted her but why would Elizabeth Taylor want eddie fisher . What did you mean by that . She wonders too, now, as well. Of course she found that out right afterwards. I told eddie, i told him that what would happen was that in 1. 5 years she would realise that he was really nothing and she will throw you out. Thats what happened. She met Richard Burton and he was out. A lot of scrutiny when that story broke. It must have been unbearable. At one stage you said its bad enugh when a man walks out on you but to have millions of people watch it, the fact that the public took it as an affront to them, that was unbelievable. This was very much played out in the public gaze, wasnt it . Isnt everything in show business . Everythings in the public eye. Carrie said that mother is like Brad And Angelina and Jennifer Aniston today. You and eddie and elizabeth. It was a similar story. I always make a joke of it. I said that elizabeth went down the nile. Eddie fisher has always challenged your version of the break up, hasnt he. At one stage he said debbie has never forgiven me for what happened. She knows i didnt leave her for elizabeth, we were apart long before that. But thats not the role she plays for the public. Poor boy. I feel so sorry for him. He has to make up some story. He was even less generous about you. He said that Debbie Reynolds was The Girl Next Door that was your image but only if you lived next door to a self centered, totally driven, insecure, untruthful phony. Well, the good thing is we found out he could read. Have you forgiven him . It doesnt sound like it. I kid about it, but yes i have forgiven eddie. But i have never really understood a man leaving his children. I can understand leaving the woman but he never really came back around to be a very good father. So i dont particularly admire that. I mean, i have wonderful children and i am their parents. So, if you ask if i have forgiven him, i say that with a bit of anger because i have a son, that is his only son, and he misses having a good father. So when eddie left, he really left. Do you think hollywood has changed a lot since those days . Life is still lived out in the public glare but these days, is probably even more frenetic. 24 hour entertainment channels. You almost feel celebrities are being watched around the clock. Well the world has changed, hasnt it . When i came into films, the studios owned the release of the films and then Congress Took that over and they could no longer release their films so than television entered the scene so that the Film Industry was cut in half, their earning power. Television then took over and then movies, the golden era ended, nobody was under contract longer, they dropped clarke gable, then greta garbo, all the great big stars were let go, i was really the only one left under contract. You spent 17 years under contract at the studios. In those days, they told you, right, this week you will be in this film, next week that film, it was very a controlled life for an actress and its not the way these days. No, i think its much harder now. You have to buy your own product, buy your book, produce it yourself, raise the money, much harder. We were really produced. They were finding the movies for you. We were owned, we were under contract. But it was a wonderful life. We were very sheltered, we werent paid nearly what they get today they get 20 million a picture. What you think about that . I think they should save their money. Some people say the thing about the hollywood system in the past, they produced bad movies big as well because they needed to find movies for you to do and it wasnt always. Well, theyre not all good today either but i think they made some very good pictures and i think they make some good ones today. I think they are very fortunate in the salaries that they make. I wish for all of the stars Great Success and i hope that they give a lot of their money to charity because they have a great opportunity to help people. Most of them are doing that. I admire that very much. We made 700 a week. In the beginning i made 65 a week. They make 20 million. Theres a great deal of difference. One other difference, they talk about the golden age of hollywood but it was an innocent time in some ways. Thats why your breakup with eddie fisher was such a scandal that played out, but the films were more innocent too, when they . Boy meets girl, they fall in love and live happily ever after. Donna reed, andy griffith, corny pictures. Very home body. Theres too much violence and pornography, really, i call it pornography, today. The innocence is gone. I think a body can look beautiful through a veil, it doesnt have to be just boom. I dont really want to see a mans frontal or a woman. I think its not appropriate for children or young people. If you want that kind of movie you can go and see it but i really dont think it should be for the general public. Do you think hollywood is dictating the product or are the audience . Television has gone much too far. Television. I dont say the films have necessarily, but they have but really, television is pushing it because its so popular and there is so much cable today. You have hundreds of programmes. Before, we didnt even have television. You had two stations, then four stations and now its. To fill that, its like an octopus. To give the public what they want is very difficult for all the networks, the competitions unreal. The paparazzi are unreal. Its relentless, a very fast world today, hard to keep up with it. Thats why i wonder whether today it would be very difficult to endure your breakup with eddie fisher, it was very public then, but what if it was today . Well, it would be awful. You just watched it with angelina with brad, they follow them everywhere. I feel very sorry for them but i went through that. I had Hundreds Of Press in my front lawn and the backyard, the swimming pool. All around. It is difficult and its not something that one likes to have happen. It wont happen to me again. Im just going to be here and visit the uk and play at the apollo theatre, im just going to have a good time and be live on stage and do what i like to do but my life can be easy now because ive been in the business 63 years and ive had 63 wonderful, glorious years. Im very happy with my life, ive been through all of it now and ive done all of it and ive had a great life and a great time and im still having it, thats what i like. You always make very pithy comments, you are a very