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Her character swept into Downton Abbey as if she owned the place, to the distaste of the Dowager Countess.

And when Hollywood legend Shirley MacLaine, 78, first arrived on set for her role as US millionairess Martha Levinson, she felt right at home in 20s England too.

But that came as no surprise to the Oscar-winning actress, author, New Age guru and UFO-watcher.

She simply assumed she had lived there in a previous life – maybe even below stairs with the likes of Daisy, Ethel and Mr Bates.

The Terms of Endearment and Steel Magnolias star famously believes in reincarnation and claims she was once lived a life as a medieval warrior, a gypsy girl with the power to cure impotence and a Japanese geisha.

(Image: Nick Briggs/Carnival Films)

Her mystical beliefs have been mocked, but feisty Shirley laughs off the derision and insists she “gets a big kick out of the people who think I’m a nutcase”.

And the truth is her own life story, told in the Daily Mirror today and tomorrow, is more extraordinary than any of her previous incarnations.

Shirley won a Golden Globe for her debut film role in 1955, took on studio bosses over her contract and won, became the only female member of Sinatra’s rat-pack and partied with the Kennedys.

In her 59-year career she has worked with, and clashed with, some of the greatest names in Hollywood.

And while often typecast in “tough-cookie tart” roles, Shirley became just as famous for her own prickly reputation and a love life even more colourful than that of lothario brother Warren Beatty.

In June, as she accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, Shirley thanked her past co-stars and “those I’ve made love to, on screen and off”.

Then she joked: “I swear I remember maybe half.”

Shirley was married for 28 years to late film producer Steve Parker – they had a daughter, Sachi, now 54 – and divorced in 1982.

But Shirley revealed it was an open marriage and they both had numerous affairs.

(Image: Getty)

“I had many love affairs and a lot of awful lovers,” she confessed recently. “I wasn’t into ‘sexscapades’, but I did try it once.

“It was during a political campaign where everyone was doing the same thing. So I didn’t want to be left out. I had sex with three men in one day. It was stupid and it brought me no satisfaction.”

Shirley claims to have had relationships with three top politicians – Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Australian Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock and Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.

In fact she says she had two affairs with Mr Palme – once in around AD 800 when he was the Emperor Charlemagne and she was a Moorish girl tending sick pilgrims in Spain... in another of her previous lives.

Shirley has written and spoken candidly of her affairs and admits: “I’ve always been attracted to my male co-stars. I found male actors very intriguing.”

She even told her new cast mates in the ITV1 costume drama “that I fell in love with someone on every picture I made for the first 30 years”.

There was an intense three-year relationship with tough-guy actor Robert Mitchum, a six-week “crush” on Rat Pack legend Dean Martin and affairs with Danny Kaye and Yves Montand.

(Image: Rex)

But she insists she never fell for the charms of other famous co-stars Jack Lemmon or Jack Nicholson.

She told pal Oprah Winfrey last year: “I wasn’t attracted to Jack [Lemmon]. He was a sweetheart. He was like my Aunt Rose.

“He didn’t have that dangerous, complicated, sexual-dominating confusion that I liked helping the men I was attracted to to figure out.

“And Jack [Nicholson]? Too much for me! No, he’s too much. I guess I liked the dangerous chemistry if it was controllable. His isn’t. He is authentically dangerous.”

(Image: Getty)

(Image: Mirrorpix)

In the latest of her 14 books and memoirs, I’m All Over That, Shirley revealed how sparks would often fly with a co-star on set.

She wrote: “When filming a love scene, if an aggressive actor takes off all his clothes and jumps on top of the leading lady, who may or may not peel off hers in turn, the crew will go right on lighting and moving equipment.

“The director will wave his hand to keep filming and say, ‘OK, this is good for the characters’, the publicist will roll his eyes, the front office will immediately hear about it and start to gossip, and if the two under-clad actors actually do like each other... who knows?”

She added: “It’s a rare and mature relationship that survives after the romance of the fantasy world of the movies is gone. I know. It happened to me quite often.”

Shirley claims that she is “a serial monogamist”. “There are three sets of people where sex is concerned,” she said. “The promiscuous, which I was not; the total monogamist, which I was not; and the serial monogamist, who has very deep but intense relationships while you are in them.

“I guess I learned what I needed to learn from them and then I usually fixed it so they would move on, not me.

“I didn’t like the guilt of moving away from them. I’m a middle-class girl from Virginia. I don’t handle guilt well. But I’m over the hill now.”

Shirley also said: “I have found that since sex and I have got over each other in my advancing years, it is such a relief.

“My relationships with my male friends are less fraught nowadays, and more equal and honest.

“When I look back over my life, I wonder what I was doing with all my hormones and attraction and longings, when I always felt such a strong need for freedom.

Most of the men she was with wanted to marry, said Shirley. “I was already married and stayed that way, so it wouldn’t become an issue.

“I don’t understand the need for the institution of marriage, and I could never live a life where I felt tied down to a promise just because my love hormones were raging at the time.”

Despite her many affairs, Shirley claims she has never had her heart broken. “Maybe I wasn’t involved enough to have had my heart broken,” she said. “My husband really was the love of my life. My heart would be broken, shattered, if something happened to my dog Terry though.”

Shirley insists the one love in her life now is Terry, the 11-year-old rat terrier she takes with her everywhere – even to the Downton Abbey set.

“I have never known friendship and companionship like it,” she said.

“We sleep cuddled up together every night, so it’s a good thing I don’t have a man in my life.

“I would rather have a good, funny loyal dog than a man. It’s taken me a few years to come to that conclusion, and I’m happier for it. My love for Terry brings me to tears. She has made me know that I am capable of unconditional love.

“I never knew that before.”