Maureen O'Hara: I wasn't going to play the whore One of the great beauties of her time - a star so ravishing in the romance epics of the Forties that she was known as the "Queen of Technicolour" - she was also a gutsy dame who relished a good fight, on screen and off. Flashing her green eyes and sultry smile, she played characters who didn't hesitate to slug John Wayne or cross swords with Tyrone Power. In real life, she rebuffed the advances of Howard Hughes and Errol Flynn, knocked one of her directors to the ground after she found him throwing darts at a full-length photo of her and gave "the spanking of his life" to a child actor who dared to jab a hatpin into her rear end. "I've always been a tough Irish lass," she says, grinning proudly. For most of our hour together I manage to stay in her good graces, but at the beginning she quickly puts me in my place when I overemphasise her reputation as a screen beauty. I proved there was a bloody good actress in me. It wasn't just my face. I gave bloody good performances. Later, when I question why she didn't hit the director John Ford after he socked her in the jaw at a party, she gives me a steely glance and says that she wanted to show him she could take a punch. Then - in case I'm in any doubt - she makes a fist and adds, "I can throw a punch, too." No wonder Wayne once called her "my kind of woman," and explained: "She's a great guy. I've had many friends, and I prefer the company of men. Except for Maureen O'Hara. John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in the 1952 film The Quiet Man ALAMY Among her female rivals, she certainly had no equal. Rita Hayworth was more seductive and Ava Gardner more affectionate, but O'Hara was the only one who could spar with her leading men and consistently give as good as she got. The men could never forget she was a woman, and she never let them forget she couldn't be pushed around. But she paid a price for standing up to the men who ran the studios - in particular, the producers and directors who expected to sleep with their prettiest stars. I wouldn't throw myself on the casting couch, and I know that cost me parts. I wasn't going to play the whore. That wasn't me. In fact, she was so innocent when she arrived in California at the age of 18 that she hadn't even been kissed. A good Catholic girl from Dublin, she had been discovered by Charles Laughton and had became a star overnight in London after appearing with Laughton in the last of Alfred Hitchcock's British productions, Jamaica Inn. My first real kisses came from my leading men. Imagine how nervous I was when I suddenly found myself kissing men like Tyrone Power. She insists that she wasn't even aware of her own beauty until the success of Jamaica Inn. I was a tomboy growing up. I was always jealous of the freedom that boys had and thought it was terribly unfair that they could do things like rob an orchard and not get into trouble. They call it 'box the fox' in Ireland - stealing apples. Well, after I saw myself on the screen in Jamaica Inn, I realised that the girl up there was beautiful. I didn't want to box the fox any more. Her youthful innocence explains why she was so unlucky in love off screen. She is still kicking herself over the folly of her marriage to a minor Hollywood writer and director, Will Price. She let him talk her into marriage when she was barely 21. I was a stupid ass to marry Will. He was from Mississippi, and I think I must have been taken in by his Southern charm. But I soon found out what a tragic mistake I'd made. He was a terrible alcoholic, and I would come home and find him passed out on the floor. It was too sad. They had a daughter - Bronwyn, now 59 - but the marriage was troubled from the start and ended after 10 difficult years. All the same, her marital problems didn't slow her meteoric rise to stardom. Miracle On 34th Street (1947) starred Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O'Hara, John Payne George Seaton and Natalie Wood REX FEATURES She was constantly in demand and appeared in such classic films as the Christmas favourite Miracle on 34th Street (with young Natalie Wood) and How Green Was My Valley. The latter was supposed to be shot in Wales, but the outbreak of war made travel overseas impossible, so Hollywood brought Wales to Malibu, creating an elaborate village in the hills above the Pacific. It was so authentic, we thought it was Wales. A lot of the actors and crew were Celts, and we liked getting in touch with our roots when the war had cut us off from the real thing. It was inspiring. Unfortunately, she also starred in a few stinkers - including some desert romances that she jokingly refers to as "tits and sand" movies. Her experience in this genre led to her playing the title character in Lady Godiva, which featured her on horseback wearing only a long wig and a body stocking. The critics weren't kind, but it's worth remembering as one of Clint Eastwood's first films. He is listed in the credits as "First Saxon." Years later, I saw him at an awards ceremony, and he told me how glad he was to have that part. He said he was hard up at the time, and it helped him pay the rent. Of all her films, O'Hara is most proud of the five she made with John Ford - in particular, The Quiet Man, which was filmed in Ireland in 1951. It's a masterpiece that allowed her to make the most of her feisty sexuality. Cast as John Wayne's wife - strong but also tender - she poured her heart into every scene, and it shows. We look like a real couple, Duke and I, don't we? John Ford gave both of us the confidence to do our best. But he was living out his fantasy of life through Duke and me. He was Sean [Wayne's character] and I was his ideal woman. Just as Hitchcock had his fantasies about icy blondes, so Ford dreamt of hotblooded Irish redheads. But his relationship with O'Hara was immensely complicated. He adored her, yet knew he couldn't have her. He was too old for her and understood she didn't want a romantic relationship. So he worshipped and abused her, venting his passion through his film making. One moment, his camera is lovingly following her buxom figure through a field of lush green, and the next it's watching her being dragged by the hair through sheep dung. That was real dung in The Quiet Man. He was the biggest devil, John Ford. He put as much of that dung in the field as he could, and then made sure that I was covered in it by the end of the day. Oh, I can still smell that awful stuff. The more she and Ford battled with each other, the more he loved and resented her. For her part, she was often mystified by the abrupt shifts in his mood. Only gradually did she come to realise that he was obsessed with her and couldn't control his feelings. When he got drunk, he would write incoherent love letters to her, then accuse her a short time later of betraying him or lying about him. One day, she discovered that he had broken into her home and gone through her belongings. I respected him as a director and wanted to please him. But he could be impossible sometimes, especially after he'd been drinking. After The Quiet Man proved to be such a great success, she thinks that jealousy drove him to undermine her chances for an Academy Award. She certainly gave an award-winning performance - the best of her career - but was not even honoured with a nomination. She believes that Ford waged a campaign against her behind her back. The fact that she put up with so much abuse from him is not unusual. Ford abused almost everyone who worked under him - even Wayne - but with O'Hara, the whole thing was obviously influenced by an irresistible sexual passion. Overwhelmed by that passion, he hit her so hard in the face at a party that it snapped her head back. His obsession finally ran its course by the end of the Fifties, leaving O'Hara in the hands of more conventional directors, who saw her not as a sex symbol but as a middle-aged wife. Disney put her in The Parent Trap, with Hayley Mills. The part was a far cry from her days as Ford's Technicolour queen. Maureen O'Hara arrives at the TCM Classic Film Festival's Opening Night Gala in Los Angeles in April 2014 AP By the end of the Sixties, she was ready for retirement. She married a real-life hero - the aviation pioneer and air force general Charlie Blair - and moved far away from Hollywood, dividing her time between the Virgin Islands and Ireland. I was happier with Charlie than I'd ever been in Hollywood. We had a great life. But in 1978, her husband died in a plane crash, and she was left alone again. The next year, she also lost her greatest leading man. She still vividly remembers her last visit to the dying Duke. He was very ill and was confined to his bed at home. I went in to see him and couldn't hold back the tears. He asked if I was crying for Charlie and I said yes. I didn't have the courage to tell him that I was also crying for him. We adored each other, like brother and sister. When I left, he reached out and held the collar of my coat and said, 'That's a gorgeous coat. It looks beautiful on you. Those were the last words he spoke to me. So many of her contemporaries are now gone, but she doesn't seem in any hurry to join them. She has a grandson on whom she dotes, business interests that she looks after in the Virgin Islands and has just finished a lively and very entertaining autobiography, 'Tis Herself. She says that she plans to live another 20 years. Charlie Blair's mother lived to be 102, and I admired her so much that I always said I wanted to be like her. Well, why not? That's what I'm aiming for. I think I'll just stick around until I'm 102.