Watch: from Grace on TV to The Beatles on stage

She is starring as Adrienne Kennedy in Adrienne’s autobiographical play, co-written with her son Adam P Kennedy, in Chichester’s Minerva Theatre from June 16-July 8.

The piece tells how Adrienne Kennedy impulsively left New York for London with her young son, intent on adapting John Lennon’s book In His Own Write for the stage. In the heady atmosphere of the swinging 60s, she found herself rubbing shoulders with a dizzying array of celebrities, including all four Beatles. And when her idols, Laurence Olivier – director of the National Theatre – and his influential literary manager Kenneth Tynan, along with actor Victor Spinetti, promised to produce her play, it seemed like a dream come true. But slowly the stars seemed to align in a different way…

“This is my first time in Chichester,” Rakie says. “I have never been to Chichester before and I have never actually seen anything in Chichester. It's really terrible!

"You say to people ‘Oh yes, I will come and see you’ but then you don't make it and then if you're lucky you get to see them in the London transfer. So I feel bad! But actually it is not just Chichester. I hadn’t seen any of Adrienne Kennedy’s work before or really heard of her. If I had heard of her in the past then I hadn’t logged the name. But my agent rang and said ‘You are being offered a job in Chichester. Shall we read the play and see what we think?’

" That was my introduction and when I read it, I just thought what an extraordinary story. I didn't really even think of it as a play. I just thought of it as an extraordinary story and then I thought ‘They want me to do it!’ They told me that the director would like to meet me to talk about her ideas and I looked at it and I just thought well that's a lot of talking. I met (director) Diyan (Zora) and we talked for two hours. We just clicked but then the next day I thought I can't do it. There's so much talking! And I swung back and forth for the next three weeks. I just kept thinking it's an amazing story but can I tell it? And I had a different answer to that question every day. But eventually I just decided that I am going to do it. In the end, my ego didn't want anybody else to do it if not me and I also thought I have been working as an actor for 34 years and I've never been to Chichester!

“What makes the story extraordinary is the fact that from an idea that anybody could have had Adrienne went on this course in her life, through extraordinary circumstances and chance encounters, to the point that she found herself at the heart of the British theatrical establishment but also the British pop culture at a time when these two worlds might not have crossed or even encountered each other. It was amazing that she just turns up in London at that point…”