THE message from Michael Palin reads: "To Rona - if only you'd been in charge of the humans as well."

It is scrawled across a photograph of him with Fierce Creatures co-stars John Cleese, Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis - one of a sheaf of prints on Rona Brown's dining room table.

There is one of Clint Eastwood cuddling a chimpanzee and another of Jodie Foster in crinoline with messages of thanks to Rona from both stars.

Two-legged stars have reason to be grateful to her for the expertise she brings to handling animals and encouraging them to hit their marks like true pros.

Animal trainer Rona has been coaxing creatures great and small to perform for the camera for 40 years and has learnt to talk to animals in a way that would turn Dr Dolittle green with envy.

Neighbours have got used to seeing tiger, lion and bear cubs trotting around her home in the Wallops, and not so long ago she had piglets playing in the back garden in preparation for The Tamworth Two, a television film about the pair of porkers that went on the run in Staffordshire.

But today the house is animal-free - her last pet, a very unexotic but much loved cat, died at the grand old age of 22 last year.

"I've raised chimps and wolves," says Rona, who runs Movie Animals. "My children grew up with lions, tigers and bears - and the chimps would go with us to cub camp."

These days her son Chris has grown up and now works for her.

"He didn't realise how much he picked up growing up with animals," says Rona. "Now he's marvellous with bees and flies, and brilliant with spiders, but he's just the same with cats and dogs and exotics. He knows, like me, when lions have had enough and need to take a break."

Rona started her film career with Walt Disney at Pinewood Studios.

"They were happy days. We started the movie with no time restraints and no budgetary pressures. Patrick McGoohan was always the hero with Samantha Eggar or Sue Hampshire - and Leo McKern and Lee Montacue were always the baddies.

"And we did all the Hayley Mills films, like The Three Lives of Thomasina and In Search of the Castaways."

Since those early days, Rona's career has taken her all over the world, including Malaysia to source and train 23 elephants for Anna and the King, starring Jodie Foster. Last year, she was in Thailand working on a remake of Swiss Family Robinson. And sometimes Hollywood comes to her.

"Clint Eastwood was over here making a film," she recalls. "He likes chimpanzees and word went out that I was the person to speak to, so he phoned me up."

She was hand-rearing a chimp called Susie and would take her to the studio to play with a delighted Clint.

Chimps and elephants are her favourites, she says, and she has been known to make a monkey of herself, quite literally.

For Greystoke, the story of Tarzan and the Apes, she donned monkey costume to play a chimp.

"All the big ones were people in suits," she chuckles. It was the same on Gorillas in the Mist and the little gorillas were my chimps with little hairy anoraks on."

These days, she devotes time to encouraging others to follow her career path. She has helped set up the City & Guilds NVQ Levels 1-3 in Animal Training for the Audio Visual Industries, in conjunction with Skillset, the training body for the film and television industry.

Sparsholt College will introduce the first courses in September, and she is currently developing a Level 4 NVQ.

However, not everyone is cut out to work with animals, she says.

"You've got to like animals and they've got to like you. You either know how to get inside an animal's head or you don't.

"But I wouldn't do anything else. I'm just blessed."