The actress went on a
tour of Elvis's haunts and interviewed the singer's former wife Priscilla for
the filming of Elvis And Me, which focuses on his rise to fame and the early
years of his success.
Lumley, 69, became a fan
of Elvis, who would have been 80 this year, when she was a child
She said: "I felt
if I'd met him, I'd have obviously married him. And the fact that Priscilla was
gorgeous when she was 14, and I was a spotty nerd, was beside the point.
Everybody in the world felt: if I'd met Elvis, I would have been his best
friend, girlfriend. Everybody."
On interviewing Priscilla,
who met Elvis at the age of 14 and married him at 21, Lumley said: "I
loved her. She was extraordinarily generous
"It's a long time
since Elvis has died, and she's been asked everything about Elvis, everything's
been written about Elvis good or bad. The adoration is such that is like
practically a kind of religion, the love of Elvis.
"And she's
steadfastly had to endure that and make herself strong enough to cope with it.
She in her own right is a terrific person, but of course, we only really see
her as the Elvis bit."
She added: "He's
been my number one for ever and a day ... Elvis was always singing to me.
Obviously. And even Priscilla, when she wrote a sweet letter after we'd shown
the film to her, put: 'It was such a pleasure to show Joanna around Graceland,
the house which ought to have been hers' - with a smiley face."
The documentary focuses
on the early years of Elvis's life before his divorce, weight gain, heavy medication
use, health deterioration and death in 1977.
"I don't want to do
that, because that's not the Elvis the world loves. The world loves the boy who
sang Blue Suede Shoes, or Jailhouse Rock, who hung around with his great big
gang, who was very polite and called interviewers 'Sir'. There was something touching,
and I just wanted to know: how do you get to be there? How did this boy come?
Was he born like that? Was he made like that? Influenced to be like that?"
In the hour-long
documentary, she visits Abbey Road to watch a recording session of the new Elvis
album If I Can Dream with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, who are re-doing
the backing music to many of his most famous songs.
She also makes a trip to
Tupelo, Mississippi - Elvis's home town - where she visits the shack where he
was born and the hardware shop where he bought his first guitar.
She also talks to some
of the people who knew him, including Sam Bell, who reveals what life was like
for a young Elvis growing up in a time of segregation.
Lumley said: "There
was something about Tupelo, that I felt him. There was something about the boy
there in the hardware shop, and the guitar was there, and you get a feeling
going - oh he was only a little kid and this was - it's still a hardware shop.
"I felt him in the
cinema with Sam. Black friend Sam, in the cinema, from his childhood, when they
would have to go through separate entrances to the cinema, and Elvis would duck
under the rope and sit with them. And I loved him for that, because he was only
a little boy, and he was colour blind. He didn't get that, while the country
got that, Elvis didn't get that. And sitting in that little cinema, exactly
where they sat - that was something."
She added: "I feel
Elvis and I have always known each other. What I mean is that I found I'd got a
bit nearer to him, but there's something un-knowable about him I think,
too."
Lumley has also filmed
documentaries about pop star will.i.am, the Trans-Siberian railway, and the
Northern Lights - but now she is working on Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, due
out in 2016.
On reprising her role as
Patsy Stone alongside Jennifer Saunders' Edina Monsoon, she said: "You
only have to remember a few things. You just have to remember the body language
because she's had all her organs taken out. You just remember that she wears
hard - she wears hard red lips and things
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