Inside Miriam Margolyes' life with longtime partner and why they spent over 50 years living apart
Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure, known and loved for her impressive acting career, larger-than-life personality and naughty sense of humour. The 83-year-old is back on our screens in a repeat of her BBC documentary series, Miriam Margolyes: Almost Australian, which sees the actress embark on a 10,000-kilometre, two-month journey to discover what it means to be Australian today, having become an Australian citizen back in 2013.
Miriam, 83, has her partner Heather to thank for her long-standing love of Australia, having first visited the continent after meeting her other half over 50 years ago. But how much do you know about Miriam's partner? Find out all you need to know…
Miriam Margolyes' longtime partner
Miriam's partner is Heather Sutherland, a retired Australian professor of Indonesian studies, who the actress has previously described as a "wonderful, intelligent, ironic, sensitive, observant brilliant woman" during a chat with The Guardian in 2021.
Heather, 82, is a former professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and has published various research papers and books about the history of Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
Sharing her love and appreciation for Heather during an appearance on This Morning back in 2020, Miriam said: "I was lucky enough to find someone who was prepared to love me, I'm not that loveable – I'm smelly and noisy and all that sort of thing. But she loves me and I want to be with her for the rest of my life, that's all I want."
You may also like
See throwback snaps of Miriam Margolyes as a young actress
Call the Midwife star Miriam Margolyes exit rumours explained
7 Graham Norton interviews that went dramatically wrong: Miriam Margolyes, Mark Wahlberg and more
How Miriam and Heather met
Miriam and Heather first met back in 1967 when they worked together on a BBC radio drama after the former's graduation from the University of Cambridge.
Opening up about their differing personalities, Miriam previously told The Guardian: "She doesn't like showbiz, but I think she's proud of my work. She's a reserved person, completely different emotionally from me. Very contained. And she often finds my explosions difficult. She says, 'I didn’t like that.' Quite… crisp.""
The couple later formed a civil partnership, with Miriam explaining that they made things official to ensure that if one of them falls ill, the other is notified. "No, it has nothing to do with romance at all," she said, adding: "It was simply about hospitals."
Miriam and Heather's living situation
Despite being together for over half a century, Miriam and Heather have spent most of their relationship living apart. Speaking on The Graham Norton Show last year, Miriam shared her hopes of finally moving in together.
"We are together, but we live apart," she explained. "She is in Amsterdam, and I am in London but now we want to live together. I really do want to live with her because we are old, and we haven’t got much time left. It is silly to live apart."
Miriam previously explained that the secret to their long-lasting relationship was living separately.
"I've been with the same woman for 52 years, I really love her and that's a great anchor in my life," she told The Mirror in 2020. "The secret is not living together. We did for a short time, but mostly we haven't because she works in Holland. It's worked for us, because we're both involved in what we do and have no children."
She elaborated on their reasons for living apart while appearing on The Table Manners podcast in October 2023. "I'm in love with my partner and have been for 54 years," she shared. "We don't live together because we're both professional women. She is a historian and academic, and I'm an actress and documentarian."
