Strictly Come Dancing star, Cherie Lunghi has revealed that despite people constantly referring to her hot body and steamy persona, she feels she is too old to be considered a sex symbol.

56-year-old Cherie told The Mirror: “This may come as a shock to some people but I can’t help the way I feel. How others perceive me is, of course, entirely up to them and I am flattered by the attention and interest I am now receiving.

“But me as some kind of sex object? I really don’t think so – that’s not how I see myself and it’s not how I’ve seen myself for a little while now.

“The last few years have been about entering a new phase in my life. I feel like I’ve ‘been there and done all that’ in terms of my time as somebody whom men might fancy. I have a 22-year-old daughter Nathalie and I feel I’ve changed both mentally and physically.”

However, she says: “I try to live my life as honestly as I can and the last thing I want is to pretend to be something I’m not.

“To pretend to myself I am a sex symbol would somehow be dishonest. I’d feel, in my heart, that I were behaving artificially and that’s the last thing I want to do.

“That’s why I don’t want to go down the route of having plastic surgery. I want to play women my own age, rather than artificially ‘de-age’ myself so that I can play women who are younger or much younger than I am. I want to grow into those kind of more mature parts, not try and keep them at bay for as long as I possibly can.

“How other women of my age feel about themselves is, of course, entirely up to them. But it’s important to be honest with myself.”