An affair with Olivier, accused of murdering her toyboy... now the craziest twist yet for Sarah Miles as she opens spiritual healing clinic

By DAVID JONES FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Published: 01:13 GMT, 8 June 2013 | Updated: 01:13 GMT, 8 June 2013

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The solid oak door of England's smallest manor house creaks open and a fey little woman beckons me into the low-beamed kitchen built around the time of the Norman Conquest.

‘Fancy a cuppa? Earl Grey or PG Tips?' smiles the pixie-like figure, who wears a ragged peach cardigan and a grubby linen skirt (from a local charity shop; the source of all her clothes, she later informs me proudly) and nothing on her veiny feet.

I am then invited to choose a mug from the rack. If this is some cleverly staged game designed to remind me of my septuagenarian host's former glories, it works.

Back in the Sixties, doe-eyed, pouting Sarah Miles (above) vied with Julie Christie and Susannah York as our most beguiling big-screen seductress

Now aged 71, Sarah has renamed her Sussex home as the Chithurst Manor Healing Centre, and - partnered by her youthful lodger, Ian Delves - officially opened for business as an alternative healer and therapist

For my eyes are drawn to the one decorated with a face both beautiful and — to those of us of a certain age — instantly recognisable: that of actress Sarah Miles as she looked during the Sixties and Seventies, in a string of daring film roles that pushed the barriers of sexual candour.

Back then the doe-eyed, pouting Miss Miles vied with Julie Christie and Susannah York as our most beguiling big-screen seductress.

And she embarked on a series of very public affairs, some with her much older leading men.

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Among them were Laurence Olivier, opposite whom she starred in Term Of Trial, the debut movie that brought her to fame in 1962, when she was 21 (he was a troubled headmaster, she was his not-so-naïve pupil); and Robert Mitchum, the brooding husband she betrayed in the 1970 blockbuster Ryan's Daughter, for which she received an Oscar nomination.

In ‘a very dark period' of her life, Miss Miles also became fatefully involved with a young American writer who was mysteriously found dead in her hotel room after they had quarrelled — prompting accusations that she had murdered him.

Sarah Miles embarked on a series of very public affairs, some with her much older leading men. Among them were Laurence Olivier, opposite whom she starred in Term Of Trial (above), the debut movie that brought her to fame in 1962, when she was 21

However, her true ‘soul-mate' was the brilliant screenwriter and playwright Robert Bolt, whom she twice married (having once divorced) and nursed with selfless devotion as he suffered a series of strokes.

When Bolt died in 1995, she adhered to his irreverent funeral plans, meditating beside his body for two days with friends, staging a joyful wake with champagne and musicians, and burying him in a huge scarlet gown and pink scarf, in a cardboard coffin sunk beyond the croquet lawn in the grounds of their home.

Every day she trips down the garden to perch on a log beside her late husband's mossy memorial stone — inscribed with the title of his most famous play, A Man For All Seasons — to ‘share my problems with him and tell him what's going on'.

Recently, she has been seeking his guidance on a daunting new venture.

Two weeks ago, having pondered the idea for the best part of three decades, she renamed her Sussex home as the Chithurst Manor Healing Centre, and — partnered by her youthful lodger, Ian Delves — officially opened for business as an alternative healer and therapist.

Romance: Sarah was previously married twice to late screenwriter Robert Bolt, by whom she has son Tom (pictured together in 1985)

Perhaps ‘business' wouldn't be the word she would choose — for, as she tells me when we settle in the sun-bathed conservatory that will serve as her consulting room, they won't charge for the various treatments on offer (from massage to spiritual healing), they will just ask for donations and rely on their clients' good will.

Though hardly on her uppers, she could plainly use their generosity. She earned surprisingly little from her films, and she and Bolt were divorced when he made his will.

‘I must have taken a vow of poverty or something!' she exclaims, confiding that she can't afford to turn on the draughty manor's central heating in winter.

Miss Miles is given to making rather melodramatic declamations such as this; but then hers has been a melodramatic life.

One of four siblings who still address one another with their childhood nicknames —- Pooker, Chuzzer, Jules and Puss Cat (Sarah) — she was born into a well-heeled Essex family who sent her to the top girls' public school, Roedean.

Always rebellious, she was quickly expelled but found her calling when her mother, having been impressed by her performance in a play, got her into RADA.

She tells me earnestly that her ambition was to be a comedian, and it was only after her agent insisted she should audition for the sexually awakened schoolgirl part in Term Of Trial that she was acclaimed as England's latest sex siren. 

The actress had an affair with Robert Mitchum, the brooding husband she betrayed in the 1970 blockbuster Ryan's Daughter, for which she received an Oscar nomination

It was during the movie shoot, in a Parisian hotel, that she and Olivier, then in his mid-50s and recently married to his second wife, the actress Joan Plowright, embarked on their first affair.

It lasted two years, but although she had other lovers, such as the hell-raising actor Nicol Williamson and Steven Spielberg, she returned to Olivier more than once, and they remained close until his death, 24 years ago next month.

She met the Manchester-born, Left-wing Bolt at a party and within 18 months, dazzled by his towering intellect, they were married.

They were travelling in India, where he was researching an abortive screenplay for the film Gandhi, when her fascination with alternative therapies was stirred —- albeit by a practice which would make many people retch.

'Drinking your own urine is wonderful for your skin, fantastic for your hair, your immune system — it's fantastic for everything!'
 
Visiting Gandhi's ashram, she recalls, she met one of his followers and was astonished to learn the woman was 85 years old, when she looked 60 at most.

Asked how she retained her youthful complexion, the woman said it was down to drinking a daily dose of her own urine: something Gandhi strongly advocated.

‘When she told me this, I thought "Euugh!" I was disgusted — just like everybody else,' she laughs.

But a few years later, when she consulted a therapist about her recurring nasal allergies and he, too, recommended ‘urine therapy', she followed his advice.

The effects were ‘like wow!' she exclaims, and so she has been drinking it ever since. When I tell her about my arthritic knees she urges me to give it a go.

‘Listen to me — what you smell has nothing do with the taste,' she chides. ‘It's like a nice gentle beer!

'It's wonderful for your skin, fantastic for your hair, your immune system — it's fantastic for everything!

'It gives you an immediate high. Just try it!' Thanks, but I think I'll stick with the PG Tips.

Whether or not it's down to her daily tot, she certainly looks younger than her 71 years. Though she was hit by a bus while crossing Trafalgar Square two years ago and has had two hip replacements and a pin in her shoulder, she is also a picture of health — the perfect advertisement for the new centre.

Sarah's son Tom Bolt, a heroin addict in his mid-teens, has turned his life around and is now a millionaire expert on antique watches, as well as a judge on the Channel 4 antiques show Four Rooms

Still, from the night the late Robert Mitchum recklessly unveiled her then secret habit — during a talk at the National Theatre many years ago, she vaguely recalls — she was exposed to lifelong ridicule and, she is convinced, her career was damaged.

‘People are very, very strange about it. When it first came into the Press, people used to pass by me as if I was a smelly bag-lady. It was really terrible. I had letters calling me an evil witch.'

But the episode which dealt a near-mortal blow to her reputation was the mysterious death in 1973 of the American writer David Whiting, 24.

Quite why Miss Miles, then at the height of her fame and married to Bolt, succumbed to the sexual advances of the nerdish, obsessive Whiting, who styled himself on the Great Gatsby, right down to the wide-lapelled, pin-striped suits, is a matter she declines to discuss.

When she ended their affair while filming in Arizona, Whiting (by then employed as her business manager) beat her up in the cast's hotel. Miss Miles escaped, and when she returned she found him dead.

Protected by the Hollywood establishment, she was spared police questioning and testifying at the inquest, where it was ruled that Whiting had taken an overdose, even though he had swallowed just a couple of Mandrax tablets and had wounds on his body.

As the scandal unfolded her parents were hounded out of their Essex village, she was branded a femme fatale, and, she says, one British paper even accused her outright of murder. ‘I was the scapegoat and the only thing that kept me sane was my innocence,' she declares, suddenly fixing me with that familiar, wild-eyed gaze.

Does she now think it was foul play? ‘I'm afraid — yes,' she replies knowingly, then stops. ‘It was a dark period. I don't really want to delve into the darkness.'

Comfortably back in the light again, she remembers how her gift for healing was discovered by chance, by a famous American spiritual healer, Kathryn Kuhlman, who felt the energy coming from her as they stood side by side in a lift during the early Seventies.

Sarah's gift for healing was discovered by chance, by a famous American spiritual healer, Kathryn Kuhlman, who felt the energy coming from her as they stood side by side in a lift during the early Seventies

Kuhlman, who had her own TV show called Believe In Miracles, and a massive U.S. following, had immediately sensed her special gift and said: ‘You've got it! Just do it!'

At first the actress thought she was ‘a nutter'. But she gradually came to realise she could channel healing energy by laying her hands directly on someone, or by holding them slightly away and curing them with her ‘etheric aura'.

She has been healing family members and close friends for years (Robert Bolt was given only two years to live after his stroke, yet under her care he survived for 14, she says). But now she will offer her services to all-comers at the centre.

It will also provide meditation and retreat sessions, and other holistic therapies.

The realisation that she had a higher purpose than acting — the moment she calls her ‘epiphany' — came a few years later, when she was filming The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea and was required to play an emotionally gruelling erotic scene. 

Drawing on all her powers, she managed it, but afterwards, as she walked home, she says she was stricken by a life-changing experience: an ‘inner echo' which seemed to expose the very workings of the universe to her.

People can mock her, and frequently have, she smiles, but she has reached the stage where she no longer cares what people think of her, and she feels that after almost 30 years she is ready to use her ‘gifts' for the common good.

And why not, I say. After an entertaining afternoon in her company I certainly felt much better, a touch daffy though some of her homespun philosophy might be.

Particularly amusing was her description of the moment she glanced at Tony Blair's upturned hands (as they chatted during David Frost's annual midsummer party) and saw, to her horror, that the ‘head' and ‘heart' lines on both his palms were joined together.

People who have these so-called ‘simian lines' on just one hand are often geniuses, it is said. But those rare people who have them on both can be megalomaniacs or worse.

‘Blair hadn't yet become Prime Minister and everyone was still in love with him,' she recalls. ‘It sent a shiver down my spine.'

It was also uplifting to hear how her son, Tom Bolt, now 45, has turned his life around. In his mid-teens he became a heroin addict and, after he attempted to sell his parents' acting trophies and forge their cheques to feed his habit, they resorted to ‘tough love' by shopping him to the police.

Now the father of her adored 12-year-old grandson, Billy, he has since become a millionaire expert on antique watches, and is also a judge on the Channel 4 antiques show Four Rooms.

She's clearly proud of his success, but equally happy she is now following what she feels is her true calling. Beneath his mossy headstone, Sarah Miles believes her Man For All Seasons will be smiling.

For healing and therapy, visit chithurstmanorhealing.com or call 07586 923079.