Emilia Fox: Losing a baby cost me my marriage
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Emilia Fox has a passion for gardening. 'When I go into the garden, I forget everything,' she says. 'It's uncomplicated in my world of gardening. It's trial and error really. If something doesn't work, it comes out, and you start all over again.'
Emilia, you see, has discovered in the past year that she is not uncomplicated. In fact, she says, she's downright 'messy'.
She hadn't thought she was, gliding - or so it seemed - from an enchanted childhood with her parents, the actors Joanna David and Edward Fox, in rural Dorset, where she attended a posh private school, and into a blissfully happy marriage to actor Jared Harris, son of the legendary Richard Harris.
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When he proposed, Jared filled her west London home to overflowing with her favourite wild flowers, and they married in 2005 in Emilia's beloved Dorset, beneath a cloud of rare-breed butterflies, specially released for the occasion.
But the seemingly oh-so-happy three-year marriage broke up last year.
Today, Emilia is with Jeremy Gilley, the actor, film-maker and founder of the charity Peace One Day, a campaign supported by the likes of David Beckham and Stella McCartney, to declare one day a year free of conflict and war.
Emilia met him when her marriage was falling to pieces and began a relationship earlier this year.
'Jeremy is a very, very charismatic man with a lot of energy. What he does translates to who he is,' she says.
'When I met him at the Peace One Day concert, I was in a world of my own, preoccupied by what was going on with me and Jared, so I didn't compute that I was attracted to him until much later. He's fun to be with.
'I have no idea if we'll get married. It's really early days. I just get up and live my life for today - try and deal with it as it comes.
'The relationship I had with Jared is incomparable to this. When you break up with someone you thought you were going to be with for the rest of your life, it's sad.'
When I last interviewed Emilia, two years ago on the set of the BBC series Silent Witness, Jared had just sent her, by courier, a packet of her favourite coffee from Los Angeles, where he was filming the hugely successful TV series Mad Men.
She told me how lucky she was to have found him, and how amazing and special he was. The packet of coffee was just one of many romantic gestures, and it seemed their marriage would last for ever. What went wrong?
'I am much more messy and complicated than I thought I was. I'd just got on with life and not really thought about it,' she says with incredible honesty.
'I suppose my life has always been about pleasing people, making sure they're all right, doing the right thing,' she says. 'Then, suddenly, you have to face up to what you want and be honest about it. That's probably the hardest thing I've discovered over this year.
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'The truth is, it's very difficult to maintain a relationship when you're living apart from each other and you've both got careers that depend upon being in different countries. I was doing Silent Witness in England for seven or nine months of the year, and Jared's career was flourishing in America.
We didn't see much of each other.' Oh, so nothing to do with the age gap? At 48, Jared is 13 years older than Emilia, and friends have reportedly speculated that he was a bit, well, shall we say 'glum'. Needless to say, Jeremy, 40, is not.
'I've never been a believer that the age gap makes a difference to a relationship,' she says.
'It's been commented upon, but I'm much more a believer in that it's about the people you are rather than the amount of years you have lived - you're just right for each other at that moment, and then you change and so does the relationship.
'I would definitely say I'm a different person to the one I was in my 20s. If you can ride those waves together, that makes for a strong relationship, but I definitely don't feel the good or bad parts of my relationship with Jared were dictated by age.'
So what did dictate the end of the relationship?
'I had a miscarriage two years ago,' she says, sadly, 'and we didn't explore enough the impact that had on both of us and on our relationship.
I was starting another series of Silent Witness, and Jared had to go off to the US. Both of us regretted it in the end. We weren't happy, and I couldn't see my way through the unhappiness to get to the happiness again.
'I know people would say you work through the ups and downs of marriage, and that is true. I really believe in that, and I tried, of course.
'We had been immensely happy, so the unhappiness was measured against this incredible time together. Maybe it was because of having had the miscarriage, which really hit me a year later.
'At the time, I thought, "OK, so physically I'm better. Let's just carry on with life."
'I think it was my fault that I didn't explore the emotional side. I thought it was like a horrible illness that you get over. I was working and I concentrated all my focus on that.'
Emilia has always been a hard worker, a trooper. At Dorset's Bryanston school, she played cello and studied enthusiastically, eventually going to Oxford to read English Literature. Her parents warned her off acting, knowing it to be an unreliable career, but Emilia persevered and has rarely been without work.
She spends most of the year filming Silent Witness, fitting appearances in prestige films such as the box-office hit Dorian Gray and the BBC series Merlin in between.
Today, we meet to discuss her role as Queen Elizabeth II in Channel 4's forthcoming five-part drama documentary series.
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One of five actresses playing the Queen at pivotal points in her life, Emilia will appear as the 29-year-old monarch in the first hour-long episode. It deals with the moment the affair that the Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, had with Captain Peter Townsend - a divorcé, and therefore deemed unsuitable for a princess - became public knowledge just after the Coronation.
Emilia was offered and began work on the project within a matter of weeks, filming on consecutive weekends to meet the demanding schedule. Hasn't the past year taught her to let up a bit?
'I'm not very good at time off,' she confesses. 'I'm happier when I'm working. It's something to do with not knowing what the next job is, so you appreciate it while it's there. I thrive on it, actually. But now I do it to please myself.'
Emilia, it turns out, has been in therapy since her marital breakdown. She says it's helped her understand her 'messiness', to understand herself. Her parents, like her, are committed and dutiful, and they imbued her with a work ethic from an early age.
'I suppose working hard has been my way of saying thank you to my parents for what they did,' she says.
'Acting is a sporadic job. Certainly, earning money is sporadic. My dad's put three children through an amazing education. I suppose I took that on.
'My way of saying "it's been worth it" was to work hard. I've always been very aware of the responsibilities I have. I think I'm independent to a fault. When I was with Jared, I was always very aware of paying my mortgage and honouring my commitments.
Did you know?
Emilia is very health conscious these days - she gave up drinking in 2001 and smoking in 2002, and she took up kick-boxing in their place
'One thing I've learnt is that we should have shared more, but we led very separate existences. I was working when I found out I was pregnant and, of course, you're excited and happy, but it was a very short space of time between finding that out and finding out I wasn't - 12 weeks or so.
'It [the miscarriage] really was horrible, very unpleasant. Jared was here, but I was trying to fit a miscarriage into work - which was a bit bizarre - and also not letting anyone know.
'I remember doing a photoshoot on one of the days it was particularly bad - it sort of elongated itself for various medical reasons - and thinking, "This is really bizarre. I'm doing a photoshoot and promoting my latest project, but I'm also going through a mega-emotional crisis."'
Emilia pauses for a moment. 'It does show the strength of willpower, that you've got to get up and do a job because you promised to do it.
'I guess it's my upbringing. If I've made a commitment to something, then I try and fulfil that commitment. I know that sounds bizarre, especially with a broken marriage, but certainly, work-wise, if I commit, I will do my utmost. It's like any actor.
'You wouldn't miss a performance on stage unless you were being dragged off to the hospital. I've watched Dad do that all my life, no matter how awful he's feeling.'
At the age of 72, her father, Edward, is set to appear in The Secret Of Chimneys, one of ITV's Miss Marple series, while her mother, Joanna, has worked on a recent Woody Allen film despite suffering for a year with Ménière’s, the dreadfully debilitating inner ear disease.
'She's had a horrible time,' says Emilia. 'The disease makes you really dizzy, and you never know when you're going to get an attack. It's something you have to manage. She's been doing the Woody Allen film as well, so she's been pushing on through it.
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'It's horrible when you think of your... you think they're immortal and they'll be there always, touch wood. I couldn't begin to think of letting my parents go, but, I suppose, when you've got your own family...'
Which, of course, her parents had hoped she'd have with Jared. I wonder how they feel about the break-up.
'My parents absolutely love Jared, and they have their own independent relationship with him,' she says.
'Of course, they love me and their happiness is very much dependent upon how happy their children are, but it's tough. I also found it tough exposing my unhappiness to them.'
It must be hard for Jared, too, particularly given her relationship with Jeremy? 'I imagine... I don't know,' she says. 'Relationships are hard when the person you've left falls for someone else. I certainly went into marriage thinking, "This is the rest of my life", and I still believe in that.
'But I also don't believe in two people being together when they are not making each other happy. Something has to give. Do you work it through for another five years or try again? I don't know, but it felt right at the time.
'I felt there was an immovable thing, which was that Jared had to be in Los Angeles and I had to be in England. If you want to start a family you've got to start with being in the same country. At the time, I couldn't work out how that was going to change and make us both happy. Maybe that's selfish, but you can't keep reliving what could or should have been.
'I have learnt from this, and now I think you do have to share a bit. I would like to do that. I know, definitely, I'll have to give up a little bit of my independence, which in a way makes me feel vulnerable.'
Will she manage it? She nods, 'I hope so. I believe in love and I believe in sharing my life with someone.' And it seems that Jeremy is just the right man for the job.
The Queen is on Channel 4 on 1 November.
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