She is a character almost larger than life, recognised for risqué stories and on-screen profanity, as much as her acting and television work over the past seven decades. However, a new documentary arguably presents Miriam Margolyes as we have never witnessed her before, still entertaining but at home beyond the spotlight, and at moments even subdued and vulnerable.

Miriam Made Me Me began as a potential podcast venture but has become a BBC documentary, with FaceTime exchanges and discussions at home with her friend Simon Draper which were captured on his phone, ultimately combining for a film which is authentic and provides a fresh insight into the national treasure as she discusses her remarkable career, to health woes and her own mortality.

At one moment we observe Miriam heading for a "spinal injection" to attempt to alleviate her pain. Making her way out to the taxi she confesses she is "anxious and frightened" and even half jests that if it goes awry she could die and she wants her final words to be "Thank you world, for a lovely ride".

Later in the film Simon also enquires of the 84 year old about her mortality, and she is as frank as ever, reports The Mirror.

"Death feels extremely close," she says. "Death feels round the corner, behind the bush just up the road. I am scared of it, and I think I probably always will be, and I'm cross about death. It's a bit of a liberty to close me up to stop me.

"It's going to happen, and I hope it happens without pain, without loss of dignity, all the things that everybody wants, but I'll be sad when I die, and I hope other people will too. 90 would be good. I would like to be 90. I would like to be 90 and still myself. I don't want to be 90 and be a babbling twat."

For the time being, thankfully, there's no babbling, and audiences queue up in their thousands to watch her speak for hours on stage.

Alongside risqué anecdotes from her younger days, Miriam can accompany them with accounts of her career, which feature memorable performances in Blackadder, Vanity Fair and the Harry Potter franchise. She acknowledges she would "like people to remember her" for her acting contributions.

Numerous years previously she was raised in Oxford and attended the prestigious Oxford High School, obtaining a degree in English from Cambridge. At university, she appeared in the 1962 Footlights show, alongside men who would later become members of Monty Python and the Goodies. However, as the sole female in the production, she has stated she was treated with contempt.

Two years following her relocation to London she secured employment with the BBC Drama Repertory Company and has seldom been without work since. Friend Simon journeys to Australia to observe Miriam perform her final show of an Australian tour at Sydney Opera House, and it comes as no surprise to witness her achieve tremendous success there. However, in the lead-up to the performance we observe her anxious and packing spare pairs of navy knickers in her bag in case her bladder fails, which it occasionally does owing to her weak pelvic floor.

"I'm a little bit nervous, I always get nervous just before, in case I don't deliver. People come with expectations," she says.

"But that moment where you can connect with people in a theatre is like no other. I feel completely involved."

She subsequently admits money was "totally" the motivation behind her beginning to write books in her Eighties, which have proven remarkably successful.

"In my Eighties I have not only become disabled but I have become very much a more popular, I don't know what to do about that.

"I would have liked to be rich earlier. I am rich now, well I am not that rich, I got a quarter of a million for writing a book and then a quarter of a million for writing another." Speaking at a screening for the documentary in London, she disclosed her future intentions, which also potentially indicate some easing back within a year or two, enabling more time with her long-term partner Heather Sutherland.

Miriam Made Me Me is on BBC2 and BBC iPlayer on Monday at 9pm