What was it like, people still ask me, to be swept into stardom by playing Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet"? Several years later, it still seems as if it were part of some extraordinary experience that happened to someone else. It was beautiful, but it's hard to believe that it was real.

My first audition was a nightmare. I arrived one morning to be interviewed by director Franco Zeffirelli and the room was filled with pretty blue-eyes blondes, all of them testing for the part of Juliet. I wanted to leave. I didn't think there was a chance in the world that I would be chosen.

That was only the beginning. I was so nervous I fluffed everything - and I only had eight lines to do. It was the death scene from the play and I just couldn't remember anything. After a short audition, I felt somewhat relieved. There's wasn't a chance in the world, I told myself, that I would get the part.

I had gotten the audition out of my mind when a week later a call came for me to come back for another interview. This time I had to do the balcony scene. That's when I first met Leonard Whiting. He hadn't been cast yet, but he was obviosly among the final contenders. We played the scene together and this time, by some miracle, I remembered all the lines. I thought I had done fairly well, but I still didn't think I would be chosen.

Then it all happened. The phone call telling me I had won the role and before I knew what had happened, I was working in Italy.

Zeffirelli is a lovely man. He used to bully me and I would bully him back. We had a fight when he gave me a 75 year-old chaperone in Rome and forbid me to ever go out at night. He wanted me to be totally relaxed when I was in front of the cameras. But I found I would rather have Zeffirelli say "you're stupid" than for any other director to say "you're wonderful". He's a genius.

I was homesick all those long months of filming. But I got to like it before I left. The Italians are friendly people and I learned the language pretty well before I went home to London.

I learned the fundamentals of acting at the Italia Conti School in London. I was studying there when I went for an audition and then played two years on stage in "The prime of Miss Jean Brodie" But it was Zeffirelli who taught me how to explore my own talents, to be at ease in front of the camera, to believe I was living the part and not just reciting lines.

I was delighted, of course, that Romeo and Juliet became such a hit. I used to fantasize that there were all these thousands of people around the world watching me on the screen, that I was reaching them. It was like living in a dream while being awake.

It still all seems like a dream, one of the most beautiful ones I've ever had.