Actress Lauren Bacall: 'Don't call me a legend'

Lauren Bacall is not a legend. Not yet, anyway. "If I'm a legend, I'm dead," she says. "Do you want me to be dead? Legends are of the past." This is typical Bacall: 82 years old she may be, but she remains as bold, bullish and brassy as the day she first sauntered onto the screen more than 60 years ago. The woman once dubbed The Look now just shoots them with those steely grey eyes of hers. "I have no respect for celebrities," she continues, "and I object to being called one, so don't try it! I'm an actress, not a celebrity."

Sipping a cappuccino, her red woollen handbag by her side, Bacall is holding court in a luxury hotel suite to talk up her latest film, The Walker. Her ash-blonde hair is held back with a clip, while her cheeks have sunk with age, but her spirit is anything but deflated. She may be a little deaf, forever saying "Sorry?" in that brisk bark of hers, but she remains on gloriously imperious form. As she puts it, "I'm old and I don't give a damn."

The last time we met, two years ago, she wound up the interview by playfully aiming a punch at my stomach. Others have been less fortunate. Journalists have found her brusque, rude, and cantankerous. Actors, too. "She's fantastic but quite formidable," a hesitant Kristin Scott Thomas recently told me. "Everyone is terrified of her." Yet, for all this, she's no Norma Desmond. She doesn't sit in her New York apartment, cursing that her star has waned. Rather, she keeps busy by acting – and on difficult projects, such as Dogville and Birth (both with her good friend Nicole Kidman). "I just don't understand not working," she shrugs. "I'm such a ham. I love hiding behind other characters. I find that it gives me freedom."

The daughter of Jewish immigrants from the Bronx, Betty Joan Perske was a slip of a girl when she went from modelling in Harper's Bazaar to playing the dirty-mouthed Slim in 1945's To Have and Have Not, at just 19 years of age. It was director Howard Hawks who came up with "Lauren": he wanted to "create a girl" as arrogant as her co-star Humphrey Bogart. In the end, he forged fireworks. Bacall fell in love with Bogart – some 25 years her senior – and they were married. They produced two children, Stephen and Leslie, and three more films together, including The Big Sleep.

Eleven blissful years of marriage ended in tragedy when Bogart died in late 1957 of cancer. Bacall, who barely left the house for 10 months during his illness, was just 31. "I hope Bogie knew how much I loved him, how much he meant to me, how I highly valued him," she wrote in her 1978 autobiography, By Myself. While Bacall remained enamoured by powerful men, from Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson to Frank Sinatra (whom she almost married), the shadow Bogart cast never dissipated. "I've had another life since then," she says, "but he was my first love, and you never forget your first love."

Bacall's latest film, The Walker, written and directed by Paul Schrader, tells the story of a society escort (Woody Harrelson) who squires rich Washington wives around town. I wonder what made her pick the role of Natalie Van Miter, Harrelson's canasta-playing confidante. "Made me pick it?" she cries. "I'm lucky to get it! I don't have big choices." Yet Bacall was once friends with Jerry Zipkin, Nancy Reagan's "walker", and understands the appeal of these non-sexual society partners. "It feels better having an escort," she says. "I don't have many escorts in my life. But I don't like to enter rooms by myself. Literally. So I understand from that point of view why that exists. It's great to have one person that does not judge you and you can kind of confide in."

Single now for longer than she cares to remember, if she's lonely Bacall steadfastly refuses to show it. "I like being alone a lot. I have to really care about someone or else I would rather be by myself." Her source of companionship is her dog, who scurries through the door during our conversation. "Sophie has arrived," announces Bacall. "Princess Sophie." The white papillon curls up next to me and Bacall begins to talk to her, mixing squeals of delight with cries of, "She's my girl". It's in stark contrast to her iconic screen image – what Bogart called "steel with curves".

While Bacall is not one to show emotion, she admits if she ever hears Bogart's voice on TV it gives her shivers. "Sometimes I get very nostalgic because he died very young and he didn't have a chance to see his children grow at all. But on the other hand, because he never aged he's more alive than ever to more generations. He'd have never believed this."

Bacall's life has been beset by difficulties, from the departure of her father when she was six – encouraging her to switch to her mother's maiden name – to her own divorce from her second husband, the actor Jason Robards, with whom she had her third child, Sam. But Bacall is a survivor, shielded by her own brittle humour. "You have to have a way to cope, to get through the rest of your life. You have disappointments, people hurt your feelings, friendships dissolve for no reason... all kinds of weird things can happen in life and you better learn how to deal with it. And the way to deal with it is to laugh at yourself."

Bogart's death coincided with the demise of the studio system where actors were under contract. "Back then, movies were being made constantly," she laments, "and everyone wanted to make movies – even the studio heads." Certainly, by the 1970s Bacall's own career was floundering, with films such as The Shootist and Murder on the Orient Express. Greater satisfaction came via theatre, in shows such as Cactus Flower and Applause! – doubtless why she has little time for modern Hollywood, which has never quite given her the respect she deserves. Her only Oscar nomination was for the 1996 Barbra Streisand vehicle The Mirror Has Two Faces; she lost to Juliette Binoche for The English Patient.

"It's all about money nowadays," she sighs. "There's no accent on quality, on standards, and they don't write parts for women anymore. When I first went into pictures, women absolutely ran the show. Bette Davis practically owned Warner Brothers. She was my favourite. Every time she's on television, I love to watch her work." Bacall doesn't know many of the stars of today. "They're all too self-involved, y'know? And they're so unaware of what goes on anywhere else."

She also has no interest in an honorary Oscar – "Lifetime achievement? How many lifetimes have you got?" she spits – or a posthumous biopic. "I've told my children I'll haunt them forever if they do that." You can't even get her to stop working: she's currently in Norway shooting the black comedy Wide Blue Yonder, set in a retirement home – the last place you'll find her. "I just have to keep going as long as I can," she smiles.

'The Walker' opens on 10 August

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