Miriam Margolyes claims she remembers having her first orgasm at three years old
The British-Australian actor Miriam Margoyles (Simon Schluter/Fairfax Media/Getty)
Miriam Margolyes has opened up to Louis Theroux about her memory of experiencing her first orgasm.
Characteristically candid, the lesbian actor appeared on this week’s episode of the Grounded with Louis Theroux podcast to talk about sex and attraction, among other things.
As always Margolyes, 78, wasn’t shy about “saying the unsayable”, and happily shared a memory of her first orgasm when walking past her then-schoolmistresses house.
“I know that I loved it,” she said. “I remember feeling orgasm when I was three, which is early for such emotions and reactions.
She went on: “I had a crush on my preparatory schoolmistress. I remember walking by her house in Banbury Road [in Oxford] and as I approached her house I felt this overpowering heat in my loins, and it was deeply pleasant and rather exhausting.”
Miriam Margolyes didn’t know her ‘arse from elbow’ aged three.
Reacting to Margolyes’ revelation, Theroux asked: “I’m going to risk being over-intimate and ask if there was there some self-stimulation going on or was it more or less a spontaneous event?”
She replied: “No, there wasn’t friction, it was simply mental. The power of longing and desire. But I was honestly three and I didn’t know my a**e from my elbow then.”
When considering why her teacher was the first to awaken such passion in her, she said: “I don’t think you ever know why you feel such passion for people, it was inexplicable and I was walking with my mother…
“You know, my relationship with women continued right through school,” she continued. “I didn’t know I was going to become a fully-fledged lesbian, I didn’t realise that, I thought I was like everyone else. But that happened much later.”
Miriam Margolyes has been in a relationship with academic Heather Sutherland for 52 years, preferring to live separately for personal space reasons.
“I’m not beautiful and probably not very attractive, but early in my life I found the woman of my dreams, of my heart, who is the woman of my life,” she told Theroux of her partner.
“I haven’t always been faithful, but I am now, and I’m just grateful I got to that rock which has eradiated my happiness for the rest of my life.”
