NEVER SAY NEVER My first big role at 88!’

Success didn't happen overnight, but Maggie's thrilled she's stayed the distance

- Hayley McLarin

Maggie Blinco is about to become a great-grandmother and she is knitting up a storm. But she isn't creating booties and matinee jackets for a newborn - this delightful octogenarian makes sparkly bras for twentysomethings to wear on nights out to bars and clubs, which she sells at her daughter's shop.

The seasoned Sydney actress loves to knit and sew between roles, but she may find herself with less time on her hands as her first leading-lady film is about to hit the big screen.

Filmed just before the Covid pandemic struck, A Stitch in Time tells the story of Liebe, who gave up! her passion for dressmaking for love, but after enduring decades of emotional abuse, is in her eighties when she leaves her cantankerous partner. Unsure who she is anymore, Liebe must establish herself again and is befriended by a young designer who gently supports her as she takes tentative steps to create the family she has always craved.

It's a role Maggie adored, not least because it showed that older people didn't need to be portrayed "merely as dribbling in a wheelchair or off in fairyland".

"I know what it's like to feel invisible and I have played those dementia roles before. But I like to play energy, to show my normal life," the now 88-year-old tells the