She has previously urged people to “enjoy” the signs of ageing, telling Good Housekeeping in 2019: “I have lines, lots of them but do you know what, I don’t mind. We should all enjoy every line we’ve got on our faces, because we’ve earned each one.”

Calling her 60s “liberating”, she said: “Sixty was such a defining line for me, it seems to put you in an ‘older’ phase of your life. Then it happened, and I thought ‘Just forget it’. I’ve found a kind of freedom in my 60s. I feel liberated.”

She added: “I’ve started to forget about having to be a certain way, having to make up for the fact that there’s a hell of a lot of stuff I don’t know and I’m enjoying life instead. I’m getting on and doing the stuff I want to do.”

In an interview with The Telegraph in 2018, Ms Agutter said that being associated with The Railway Children all her life has never bothered her.

“It might have done if it had stopped me getting on with other work, but it’s kind of amusing to be in one’s 60s and to be thought of as 16.”