Miriam Margolyes is one of Britain’s best loved and most provocative actresses. Following the release of her best-selling autobiography, This Much Is True, she opens up to Alan Yentob, with disarming frankness, about her career highs and her most vulnerable moments.

imagine… offers a snapshot of Miriam’s life at her home in London, where she likes to engage with unsuspecting passers-by from her front steps, and features revelations about her family life as she returns to Oxford, where she spent her childhood.

Providing an insight into Miriam’s idiosyncratic career are some of the actors who know her best, including Richard E Grant, Charles Dance, Eileen Atkins, Patricia Hodge, Tony Robinson and Dame Vanessa Redgrave.

Miriam started out in theatre and radio drama but, as she reveals in this programme, a saucy cassette tape called Sexy Sonia gave her an unlikely training in the art of voiceover. This paved the way for memorable roles in advertising, from a PG Tips chimp to the Caramel Bunny.

Miriam’s scene-stealing turns in Blackadder in the 1980s made her a household name and she went on to star in major feature films, working with Martin Scorsese in The Age Of Innocence and with Baz Luhrmann in Romeo + Juliet. But it was in her role as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films that she would find fame internationally.

In a long and varied acting career, Miriam has won great critical acclaim: she wrote and starred in a lauded one-person show, Dickens’ Women, and won a Bafta for her performance as Mrs Mingott in The Age Of Innocence. Yet, at 80, she feels that she has still not achieved enough.

imagine… Miriam Margolyes: Up For Grabs is a BBC Studios production and is commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC One by Mark Bell. Alan Yentob is the Series Editor, Executive Producer is Tanya Hudson and the Producer/ Director is Simon Lloyd.