David Thewlis addresses rumours of 'secret marriage'

David Thewlis has opened up on his supposed "secret marriage", saying he married his long-term partner five years ago and never kept that hidden from the public.

The I'm Thinking Of Ending Things actor talked to The Guardian about how "weird" it was to read stories of his secret wedding.

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Asked about being "outed" as married, he said: "That was so weird. I mentioned my wife in passing on Instagram and suddenly the tabloids were reporting that 'I’d got married in a secret ceremony', like I’m a Freemason.

"I’ve been with my wife 10 years, we got married five years ago and I’ve worn a wedding ring ever since. Just because I didn’t alert the Daily Mail didn’t mean it was secret."

Thewlis' wife Hermine was actually the inspiration for his latest novel Shooting Martha, which has a timely video-call but was written pre-pandemic.

Explaining that it "pre-dated all the lockdown Zooms", Thewlis said he had been FaceTiming his wife while they were in separate countries for work.

He said: "It kept our relationship alive. We’d cook the same meal, drink the same wine and dine like we were at the same table. When we turned each other off at the end of the night, it was strange and existential because we’d been together but not."

Shooting Martha is about a man keeping his late wife's memory alive by video calls.

The actor also said that he and his wife had passed the time during lockdown by getting into wood carving, but he admitted she had been much better at it than him so he gave up.

He said he played his guitar a lot too, and that one of his first jobs was in Rodney Trotter's band Bunch of Wallies in a 1985 episode of Only Fools And Horses.

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