Vanessa Redgrave wanted to "withdraw" following the death of her daughter Natasha last year.

The 73-year-old actress, who last night (21.02.10) accepted the BAFTA fellowship - an honour previously bestowed upon Alfred Hitchcock and Dame Judi Dench - admitted her daughter's death left her in a difficult position professionally.

Natasha died following a freak skiing accident in March 2009, and Vanessa had to reschedule a number of planned events to grieve her loss.

She said: "Instinctively you want to withdraw, but you know you have given your word and you must stick to it.

"The people you are working with are very understanding and very supportive in all sorts of ways. But it's very difficult."

Vanessa postponed a promised performance of stage play 'The Year of Magical Thinking' in aid of charity at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York, but later managed to then commit to the project.

She said: "I couldn't do it. But then I promised I'd do it in October and it went very well. I kept my word and the performance made a lot of money."

Discussing the more than 100 films she has worked in during her career, Vanessa says it's hard to pick a single favourite.

She added: "It's complicated, you don't want to put up one director against another or you don't want to mention the director you didn't like. But you know the film I remember most is Sydney Lumet's 'The Seagull', that we made on an island near Stockholm when Natasha and Joely were very, very little.

"I remember it not because it was a good film but because of the fun we had as a family, the long summer white nights and the jokes we had."