The need in me

She's just working out how pleasant it will be to walk her beloved west highland terrier, Oscar, who's travelling with her as she tours with Birmingham Rep in its production of Wuthering Heights.

"I'm looking forward to coming back to Scotland," she says in that voice that's instantly recognisable, with cut-glass vowels and the texture of cracked leather. "I love it. I get a feeling of home, which is really nice. It warms my cockles."

In a career that spans nearly 50 years and has covered stage, television and film, it's not surprising that for York, 67, there are few firsts. Appearing as Nelly Dean, the narrator of Emily Bronte's powerful and passionate story of doomed love set on the wild Yorkshire moors, York is reminded of another Bronte role she played. It was 1970 and she was starring alongside George C Scott in a film of Jane Eyre.

"I loved it," she says. "It's one of my favourite films that I've made. There was something unlikely about me playing Jane, I felt more akin to the Wuthering Heights subject, but actually I loved Jane and the thought of getting under her skin. It's a nice coming of full circle now being in one of Emily's."

York is part of a generation of actors including Helen Mirren and Julie Christie, and is just a little younger than the three dames, Eileen Atkins, Maggie Smith and, of course, Judi Dench. If in recent years, York has kept a lower profile than some of those women it's not that she hasn't been busy. There's been theatre work, regular appearances on television (Holby City), she's written a couple of children's books, a couple of screenplays as well as making the occasional film. In the 1960s, though, when it came to profile, it was York's time. In that decade and throughout the 1970s York's career was stratospheric. She appeared with screen legends – Alec Guinness, Montgomery Clift, Jane Fonda – and in some of the most celebrated films of the time – The Killing of Sister George with Beryl Reid, and Tom Jones with Albert Finney. She picked up an Oscar nomination and carved out a reputation as a fearless actor but one who was always interested in doing her own thing, making her own decisions.

At Rada, where York studied from 16 after leaving her home in Symington, Ayrshire, she won the prize for the most promising actor, but still it must've been a shock to land such high-profile film roles so quickly?

"I think I must have been unbelievably spoiled because I thought oh well this is what happens. How lovely. I sort of thought it must happen to everyone. I didn't realise that I was in any way especially lucky."

Success, of course, seldom comes without any challenges and for York one of the pressures was a fear that her good looks would lead to her being typecast. Beautiful, with blonde hair and blue eyes and a kind of gamine elegance, York was clear that her beauty had a downside, what she couldn't have known then was that it would be a lifelong challenge.

When she was young, she feared that it would stop her from being taken seriously as an actor, as she grew older it was a concern that she wouldn't live up to people's expectations of how Susannah York should look. The double bind of a profession in which how you look is almost more important than what you do.

"When I was young I thought that people were always expecting me to look a certain way," she says "Of course I very frequently didn't so I used to get both enraged and anxious about disappointing them.

"I always felt that I was a character actor, I never felt that I was a..." she trails off. A star, I offer? "No, no, I never felt that. I was doing films like The Killing of Sister George or They Shoot Horses, Don't They? or Freud – they were all character parts, they were all character people. It bothered me that people would think of me as blonde and blue-eyed and that was it. Then of course as I grew older, you know you're not looking like that freeze-frame photo and then you get worried about that."

I tell her it sounds an impossible balance to achieve and she lets out a small laugh.

"I have certainly gone through all of those things," she says. "But I think in a funny way I'm kind of out the other side of it now."

As York speaks it's clear that she's lost none of her interest or passion in acting. For her, it's always been much more than a job, she describes it as a "need".

"I say to anyone who comes to me and says that they want to be an actor, don't do it unless you absolutely have to do it," she says. "And if you have to do it, go for it. From when I was about nine and got my first laugh in the school play I knew I had to do it. It was a passion and a compulsion."

The passion comes from the desire to explore characters, to become other people. She may have felt that need for more than 50 years and appeared in more than 80 films but for York, this hasn't changed.

"Becoming, really feeling that you are them, becoming them," she says trying to explain what she loves about performing. "I have a sort of little mantra I suppose," she says with a slightly embarrassed laugh. "Before I go on stage I say I am Peter (when playing Peter Pan], I am Nelly Dean, I am Nelly before I go on in this play. It's about becoming. The charge always laid against actors is that they're always performing, so where are they? And yet in another way, I think it was George Bernard Shaw when he was talking about Henry Irving in a letter to Ellen Terry, who said Henry acts to escape himself, you act to become yourself. In a weird way, that's what I think I do."

The other way York does this is through writing. It's about creating characters and exploring other people's lives. There's another more prosaic purpose too. Every actor experiences what York has referred to as "fallow periods" in their career and for York, writing is a way not only to fill time between jobs, but also to cope with it.

"Certainly my first children's book started as a therapeutic exercise, then I just loved it. Of course, when you're not working, you get scared and insecure and the worry is that you don't know when it's going to come to an end.

"You tend to feel undervalued as yourself. It's not really that they don't want your painting, composition of music, book – it's you. And that is so awful. We all have to deal with that in one way or another. I think I am lucky that I love writing."

And the other thing York feels lucky to have is a family to whom she's close. With two children, Sasha and Orlando, who live close to York in south London and now Orlando's one-year-old son, Rafferty, York revels in family life.

"I've always been very connected to my family and now I've got a one-year-old grandson, Rafferty, and another grandchild on the way," she says. "It's so exciting."

York indeed sounds happy both personally and professionally, but I'm interested in what she feels when she sees her contemporaries enjoying a resurgence in their screen careers?

"Would I Iike to do more filming?" she prompts. "Oh yes, of course. I love filming. I'd love to do more filming, I would…"

She interrupts her train of thought as she remembers something else she wants to talk about. York has long pursued small, less mainstream projects: there has been fringe theatre in pubs, one-woman shows about Shakespeare's women. Now, she explains, she's lent her voice to A Life in Colour, a film about the Edinburgh artist Margaret Mellis, who was educated at the city's school of art and then became a part of the late Bloomsbury Set.

"I saw her exhibition in Norwich and they asked me if I'd do her voice for a documentary," she says excitedly. "It's all her words and it's just an hour. I do recommend it. For anyone who's interested in art, or just in human beings, she's a fascinating character."

And with that, as if planned, we're right back to Susannah York's abiding passion.

Wuthering Heights, November 4-8 at the King's Theatre. For tickets, call the box office on 0131-529 6000. A Life in Colour, 29 October at 7.00pm, The Cameo. For tickets call 0131-228 2800

Susannah York's film highlights

1960

Co-starred with Alec Guinness and John Mills as Morag Sinclair in her first film, Tunes of Glory, the story of a conflict between two senior officers in a Scottish military regiment

1963

Appeared as Sophie Weston opposite Albert Finney in Tom Jones which won an Oscar for best picture. This is the film role for which she is perhaps most famous

1966

Played Margaret More, the wife of Sir Thomas More, in the acclaimed A Man for All Seasons. The film won six Oscars

1968

Played lesbian Alice 'Childie' McNaught in The Killing of Sister George

1969

York is nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, below. She snubs the ceremony, declaring it offensive that she was nominated without being asked

1972

Wins the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in Images, the story of a woman's descent into mental instability

1978

Plays Superman's mother Lara in the 1978 film and goes on to play the same role in its sequels, Superman II (1980) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)