Mandrake

Joanna auditions as the real naked chef

Trouper that she is, Joanna Christie regards nudity as nothing more than an occupational hazard in her line of work. The beguiling actress's friends were, however, slightly more apprehensive about her disrobing for her much-talked-about love scene with the Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe in the West End play Equus.

A few weeks before the curtain went up, one of them suggested, half jokingly, that she should host an all-nude dinner party to help build up her confidence. "It seemed a crazy idea, but the more I thought about it the more sensible it seemed," Joanna tells me. "So I got about six of my oldest friends round to my flat in Shoreditch - people I have known since school - and we stripped off before dinner.

"They were all girls, and all, like me, aged 24 or thereabouts. Within a few minutes, we all forgot that we were naked and just got on with chatting and eating the chicken and salad that I had prepared. I think we all found it liberating. People imagine someone might say, 'Gosh, look at all that cellulite,' or make some other personal remark, but of course they don't. The occasion reminded us that, underneath the designer gear and all the other barriers we put up around ourselves, we are just the same. Without wishing to sound pretentious about it, it made us aware of our common humanity."

And it did, in the event, help her with her nude scene. "It made me see how silly all the fuss was about it. I told Daniel what I had done and how it had helped me, but he wasn't tempted to follow my example. He is very at ease with his body in any case".