Keeley Hawes reveals her struggle with depression
We’ve seen her light up our TV screens in some of the biggest shows of the last few years, but actor Keeley Hawes is lifting the lid on mental health, and has opened up about her own struggle with depression – and how she copes with it.
We’ve seen the star happily frolicking on the beach in The Durrells and looking over the moon at the Baftas when Bodyguard snapped up the Must-See Moment award (for the assassination of Keeley’s Home Secretary Julia Montague).
But, in a refreshingly honest account, she's opened up about her mental health issues.
A post shared by YOU magazine (@youmagazine) on May 26, 2019 at 12:00am PDT
Speaking about suffering from depression, she told You magazine: "It’s something that never goes away. I think it’s in your DNA if you suffer with it…
"I have become better equipped at looking after myself. I’ve tried various things over the years."
Now, she says, work helps get her through it, explaining: "Keeping busy helps, being forced to carry on, because inevitably it will pass."
She also told the magazine that she sometimes suffers with anxiety, too, saying: "It’s a very human thing, isn’t it, to worry about what you say and how you are perceived."
But she manages to keep smiling. She said that during the filming of Bodyguard with Game of Thrones actor Richard Madden, the pair "didn't stop laughing", adding: "You know when someone just tickles you… and also, I think I can say this on his part, too, we’re not the most confident people you could meet and that’s nice to recognise in someone.
"I felt safe with him. We had some very odd things to do together, which means you have to trust each other, and I really did trust him."
Keeley also opened up about her relationship with her husband Matthew Macfadyen – "the nicest man in the world" – who she met on the set of Spooks and married in 2004. The couple have two children, Ralph, 12, and daughter Maggie, 14 (there's also Keeley's son Myles, 19, from her marriage to DJ Spencer McCallum).
She said: "You have to work at it. We still fill up the dishwasher and put a wash on – that’s life – but you also have to make the effort to be romantic.
"When life takes over, going out to dinner together isn’t top of your list, but before you know it, the children are older and around less and you’re sort of back together again."
Aww, she's just like us. And we love her even more (if possible). Thankfully then, we can all get our Keeley fix this year as she has a lot of exciting projects in the pipeline, including the upcoming Channel 4 comedy, Year of the Rabbit, the film Misbehaviour, about the first time Miss World was won by a non-white contestant, and BBC Two's Summer of Rockets.
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