Keeley Interview (July 2005)

Night & Day, The Mail on Sunday, 3rd July 2005

Keeley Hawes sobbed non-stop during her wedding to Matthew Macfadyen eight months ago. She says she was 'in bits', that she couldn't control her tears. 'Matthew read me a poem, and I'd choosen a passage to read to him, but I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't get the words out. I never imagined I'd be like that.

'I desperately wanted to get married to Matthew. I felt very old fashioned and romantic about marrying again - even though I'd had that horrible business before.'

By 'that horrible business', Hawes is referring to the rather scandalous end to her first marriage to freelance cartoonist Spencer McCallum. They had just got married and had a twenty month old son when Hawes met, and fell in love with, her co-star on BBC1's Spooks. Within a few weeks she'd moved out of the marital home.

'The most painful thing was that Spencer and I were such good friends. I was in my early twenties when I met him. We were best, best friends, then the lines got blurred. We had Myles, and getting married seemed like the natural thing to do. When I decided to leave my husband, nothing had happened between Matthew and me. I'm sure nobody would believe we never had an affair, but we really didn't.

'It wasn't love at first sight. It was a slow burn. It started as just a feeling, and then very suddenly, at the end of it all, I realised I'd fallen in love with him.

'I thought, "I've only been married for eight weeks." And kept it like that. I had no idea he felt the same way - I really didn't. Then he told me how he felt. I realised the mistake I'd made and where I should be, and where I wanted to be, so I did something about it.

'I think if we'd had an affair it might have tarnished things or made me feel differently, that my reasons for leaving were about something else. But they weren't, they really weren't.'

Hawes is, by nature, a fiercely private person. This is the first time she's spoken about her marital breakdown. She chooses her words carefully, not wanting to cause McCallum further pain. She says he has behaved with the utmost dignity, but acknowledges the raw emotion of divorce can bring out the devil in the best of us.

'I had no idea how horrific divorce was,' she says. 'It's up there with death as one of the worst things that can happen in life, and I truly didn't understand why.

'With Spencer and me it was probably the fact that we were best friends that hurt so much - that and the fact that it was just a complete shock to him. The press attention was also difficult.

'The worst thing that happened was when newspapers reported that I'd left my husband and baby Myles - that made me want to scream at everybody. Because I was photographed without Myles it made it look like he wasn't in my life, which was totally wrong.

'Nobody seemed to ask what was going on. Everybody just assumed. I had left my husband, yes. I was photographed kissing Matthew, yes.

'But it wasn't done without a great deal of soul-searching.' Hawes's extraordinary grey-green eyes are full of tears when she speaks about this.

'I really believed this wasn't something that was going to happen to me. My parents had been together for almost forty years - marrying for life was ingrained in me. It was going against every part of me to be doing it.'

Keeley is understandably thrilled that the 'horrible business' is at an end. She was six months pregnant with Maggie, her baby daughter with Macfadyen, when she was finally free to marry the actor at Richmond Register Office, with just two friends to witness the occasion.

'Nobody else knew,' she says. 'It was lovely - probably the best day of my life. I'll show you a picture.'

She produces a silver-framed photograph of the two of them signing the register. They are both smiling fit to burst. She clearly adores her husband.

'He's gorgeous and he's funny and I know he really loves me. I have every faith in him. Usually he's not very romantic, so when he is, you really know he means it. It really touches you.'

In a recent interview, Macfadyen said he found being married 'very sexy'. When Hawes read his words they brought tears to her eyes. 'I thought, "he means being married to me is sexy."'

The pair are on the cusp of becomming one of the most prolific show biz couples of their generation.

Macfadyen, who is currently playing Prince Hal in Henry IV, Parts I and II at the National Theatre, will appear as Mr Darcy opposite Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Bennet in Working Titles Pride and Prejudice later this year - a role guaranteed to bring huge fame and the inevitable comparisons to Colin Firth's Darcy.

Hawes is also working on a marathon scale. In the autumn she will appear in the ITV thriller Best Man, BBC1's adaptation of Macbeth, and with Steve Coogan and Gillian Anderson in A Cock and Bull Story, a film directed by the award winning Michael Winterbottom.

The morning we meet she's due to fly to Scotland, where she must finish filming Best Man. A week later she starts work on ITV's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Under The Greenwood Tree. Last night, UKTVGold premiered the Detective Murdoch Mysteries, in which she plays coroner Julia Ogden.

The interview has been fitted in to a hectic week of photo-shoots and filming. Indeed, the only time she can manage is 8am at her home in South West London. The car is due to collect her in an hour-and-a-half. Macfadyen and the children are still asleep upstairs and she hasn't even dried her hair.

There's a baby to feed, a four year old to dress and breakfast to be made. Most households would be in absolute chaos but here there is complete calm. Hawes says it's not always this way. She can, she says, be volatile and fiery. She'll throw plates, shout, stamp her foot. Her husband, it transpires is the calm one.

'I tend to go up and down quite quickly. I always have since I was very, very young. It's just become part of my personality. It would be quite easy to say it's just depression. People are very quick to shovel pills down your neck, but I got a bit sick of that.

'I decided to just accept it. You have good days and bad days. The middle ground is hard to find, but it is a relief when you're there and you're stable. Matthew is very calm, very laid back. I'm just a fiery person - much more fiery than people imagine. It's just part of me.'

She pauses. 'Shhhh,' she says. 'Listen. They're singing in the bath.'

Macfadyen has woken and has bathed Myles, who wonders downstairs for a cuddle from his mother. He is a confident little boy: funny, sunny-natured. Hawes says the one thing she didn't argue about with her first husband was access to Myles. McCallum lives just a few miles away and takes care of his son when she is working.

'It's kind of perfect becuase he's always with his mum or dad,' says Hawes. 'Myles has never slipped up and called Matthew daddy. He calls him Ma because when they first met he couldn't say Matthew. We all call him Ma. They're really good friends and Matthew's been extraordinary with him.

'I thought there may be difficulties when we had Maggie. People warned me that I'd have to be carful because Maggie is Matthews and Myles is old enough to be aware that he has a different daddy. But I don't think there has ever been an iffy moment. Myles is a glorious boy and very open. I know he's my son but he really is lovely. When I brought Maggie home to meet him he couldn't speak properly for a few minutes because he was too excited. He's been like that ever since. With everything he's had to deal with, I'd understand if he'd been a bit ratty, but he's lovely with her.'

Macfadyen ventures into the kitchen with Maggie in his arms. He is an overwhelmingly laidback, gentle man: calming and easy with the children. He moves quietly about the modern, granite worktop kitchen preparing a bottle for Maggie. The room is immaculately tiday and furnished stylishly with an old oak dining table and a Conran leather chair. Hawes says she can only function in order. Besides, both of them brought few posessions to their marriage, so I slowly kitting out the place.

She stands to make her husband a cup of tea. It's hard to believe she only had a baby five months ago. She's back in the jeans she was wearing before the pregnancy, with barely a spare inch of flesh on her. She's recently coloured her hair blonde, 'when you're dark you have to wear makeup the whole time'. She has none on now and looks even more attractive in the flesh than she does on screen.

She returned to work within three and a half months of giving birth to Maggie. She adores being a mother, but is honest about her need to work.

'I thrive upon working out the door and doing something else,' she says. 'I'm definitely not going to be - and was never going to be - a stay at home mum.

'My sister is, and she's excellent at it, but it wouldn't suit me at all. Also, I'm only 28 and I want to be doing this for a long, long time'.

Hawes was the youngest by eight years of four children born to a London cabbie. She believes it breed an impatience in her - a desperate need to be as grown up as her older sisters.

She left home at 17, worked for a while as a model, and then achieved early succes after securing a role in Dennis Potter's Karaoke at 19. Since then, she has appeared in a host of acclaimed dramas, including playing the young Diana Dors in The Blonde Bombshell, Cynthia in Wives and Daughters, Kitty in the controversial lesbian drama Tipping The Velvet and Christine in Lucky Jim.

She began filming the Detetcive Murdoch Mysteries set in Victorian Canada two years ago. The series has since won a clutch of awards in America.

'It started - if I'm honest - as something to go and do. Matthew was in New Zealand shooting In My Father's Den. He was there for three months, which is a long time.

'For one reasons or another, he never got a chance to come back, and I didn't get the chance the go over. I was needed in Canada for five days and just thought, "I'll go to take my mind off it", which is dreadful. I don't normally work like that, but it was driving me mad.

'Three months was too long - that and the time difference as well. It upset us both.

'But you learn from that. I don't think Matthew would do it again. I wouldn't let it happen with either of us. Your work is something you're supposed to enjoy. When it starts taking over you get so desperate.'

The couple are luckier than most in their profession since they can pretty much pick and chose their work, dovetailing schedules where possible.

The night before this interview they shared a rare evening at home together. Matthew cooked supper and Myles ws allowed to stay up as late as a treat. She says they strive to keep their lives as normal as possible.

'I know Pride and Prejudice will change a lot of things. They're planning a huge launch,' she says. 'I would quite understand if I started to take a backseat I've seen a preview and it's a lovely costume drama.

'It's the only time I've seen him in anything where I've forgotten it was him. I thought he was very sexy.'

Sexier than Colin Firth?

'Well,' she says, again choosing her words carefully. 'I'm quite a fan of the other one. The comparison thing for me is odd. There has only been two of them. It's quite an exclusive club to have your own Mr Darcy. There's me and Mrs Firth. I'd like to think I'll grow old with mine.


'I'm certainly not getting divorced again, so he'll grow old married to me whether he likes it or not.'