Actress Lesley-Anne Down has revealed she was almost abducted by a stranger aged 11 in a chilling echo of one of the Moors Murders.
The horror came just after the body of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady’s victim Lesley Ann Downey – almost the same age and with an almost identical name – was found on Saddleworth Moor, Gtr Manchester.
Lesley-Anne, who was in TV hits Upstairs, Downstairs and North and South, claims a man tried to get her into a car near her home in Putney, South West London.
She said: “I was almost kidnapped when Lesley Ann Downey had just been found. I’d run ahead of my mother.
"When she caught up, the man had stopped me, told me he needed a babysitter and we would call my parents when we got to his house.
“I remember having one foot in the car. Seeing my mother broke his spell. I screamed.
"My mother ran to me and told me to run to my father. He called the police. Of course my mother couldn’t hold him… he was gone.”
Lesley-Anne recalled her mum being distraught, adding: “If a child the same age as yours, whose name was Lesley Ann Downey, was found buried on the moors and then your child was almost taken… wouldn’t you be?”
She added: “I was 11 as she would have been had she lived.”
Lesley-Anne, 66, started modelling and acting the same year and her film debut was 1969’s The Smashing Bird I Used To Know.
She was voted Britain’s most beautiful teen at 15 and “pressured endlessly” to do nude scenes.
She was never chaperoned on sets and claims predators targeted her from 16.
She said: “It’s not that I was raped or any of those awful things. But raped mentally – the pressure put on you.”
Lesley-Anne moved in with writer Bruce Robinson at 15 then left him in 1980 to wed trainee director Enrique Gabriel.
They split after 18 months and her second hubby was William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist.
She met current husband, director Don FauntLeRoy, 67, on mini-series North and South in 1985 – causing her split from Friedkin.
On being friends with her exes, she said: “With Bruce, totally. I don’t know my first husband at all. Friendly with Bill? Not in the slightest, ever.”
