Carol Lynley actually hates curising, but has enjoyed a career based around the fame of being a survivior from The Poseidon Adventure in 1972.

She tells Steve Pratt she would have loved to have played a cameo in this year's re-make of the liner knocked upside-down by a giant wave.

FOR Hollywood actress Carol Lynley, the SS Poseidon is the ship that won't sink. She was aboard when the liner turned turtle and lived to tell the tale again and again. More than three decades later, she's still recounting the experience of starring in the 1972 disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure.

As singer Nonnie Parry, she clambered - unsuitably clad in hot pants and go-go boots - with her drenched co-stars up the inside of the upturned vessel looking for a way to the surface.

Now the film has been remade as Poseidon. She admits seeing the new movie, laughs uproariously and says she's not the one who should criticise it. "I might have to work with these people. I decided to say A for effort," she says over the phone from Los Angeles, where she lives by the ocean in Malibu.

Lynley was a child model who, as a teenager, was cast by Walt Disney in his film The Light In The Forest after seeing her picture on the cover of Life magazine in 1957. She has a long list of film, TV and theatre roles (and a Playboy spread) to her credit, but The Poseidon Adventure is the movie that refuses to go away.

She, co-stars Pamela Sue Martin and Stella Stevens, and director Ronald Neame have recorded a commentary for the special edition DVD release of the movie. "The boat refuses to sink. It just won't go away," says 64-year-old Lynley, who always knew the film would be a success. "When I read the script I said, 'this is going to work' but none of us had any idea it was going to be that big and would go on forever.

"I see it again from time to time and am always surprised how it works. It's not the greatest movie in the world, it's not Gone With The Wind or Orson Welles but, for whatever reason, it just works.

Making the film was "very rough" in the days before digital special effects and blue screen work. "We were actually doing what you see. It was three-and-a-half months of being wet every day 15 to 16 hours a day," she recalls. "I was a good swimmer, I grew up by the ocean and swim three times a week. I've swum all my life.

"It was very well done. We had a wonderful stunt co-ordinator. Everything was well thought out and no-one got hurt. Everything was explained to us before it happened. When the water was due to rush in, the stunt guys came and told us it was going to come in very fast and come up to our chin, not cover the nose and mouth - and that's what happened."

Remakes usually cast the original stars in cameos but Poseidon is notable for the absence of any of the old cast. Lynley was up for it, as was Ernest Borgnine. "He said, 'when the ship's going down why don't you and I go by in a kayak?'," she adds cheekily.

As for cruising, she did it once and hated it. "I took a ship out to Alaska and pretty soon was ready to get out and push it back. I like boats but sailing boats and catamarans, small boats," she says.

Scan Lynley's credits and she appears to have guested in every TV series known to man, from The Man From UNCLE to Tales Of The Unexpected via Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island and Hawaii Five-O.

She married at 18 and had a daughter, Jill, two years later. She divorced two years after that, so as a single mother working was a necessity. "I've never been in the position, had the luxury of having people support me. So I had to support other people. I really had no choice and I loved it. I loved working, doing the movies, the movie industry and the theatre," she says.

"I'm one of those awful people who get up in the morning and go, 'yeh'."

One of her best movies was the British-made Bunny Lake Is Missing, as a young mother whose daughter mysteriously disappears. Director Otto Preminger had a reputation for being nasty to his cast although Lynley, who made two movies with him, says they "got along beautifully".

"You just did what he wanted and did it immediately," she says. "Every so often he'd call and say, 'you're ruining my reputation by saying nice things about me'. But I didn't have a bad experience with him.

"And he gave me one of the best parts I've had in my life in Bunny Lake. He fought for me because originally they wanted Jane Fonda as they had a picture deal with her."

What's next for her? "Hopefully something wonderful," she says. "At this point I'm turning down a lot of stuff because I don't like what's offered to me. I prefer not to work than work in rubbish."

* The two disc special edition DVD of The Poseidon Adventure is released on Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, £15.99.