"All that fuss over the flash of a boob was totally ludicrous," sniffs Down. "I personally don't have a problem with naked bodies on television. I took my clothes off when I was young. I showed everything, full-frontal nudity."

Uh, what?

"It's the thing that I've done in my career that I'm most proud of," she continues. "It was for a docudrama on [British] prime-time television called THE ONE AND ONLY PHYLLIS DIXEY. It got enormous publicity. I was only 23 and I played the title character. I was on the cover of all the magazines and it got huge ratings. It showed a bunch of naked ladies, so of course, it did!"

Down explains that Phyllis Dixey was an infamous figure in adult entertainment. "She was a woman who was sort of a fan dancer back in the Second World War," recounts Down. "She was a huge star in the London theater. In those days the law was you could be nude on stage as long as you didn't move. So Phyllis fought the pornography laws and won. Of course, it just made her ever more famous. She had dozens of girls working for her. The show kept getting bigger and bigger and she got richer, of course. The curtains would open and it would be just her standing in some ludicrous pose, like Aphrodite."

Down experienced little reluctance about her first nude role. "Strangely enough, that didn't bother me at all because it wasn't sexual in its element," affirms the actress. "You see, I wasn't being exploited. I was doing what happened and what was. And it was very challenging for me because I played Phyllis from 15 years old to 53 when she died of breast cancer."

Aside from the obvious physical attributes, Down cites why the role was tailor-made for her. "Phyllis couldn't sing or dance, so it was a perfect part for me," laughs Down. "But we were absolutely freezing the whole time because it was shot in the winter in the north of England and it was so cold. But there were lots of girls in it with me. We all did the full frontal."