John Hiscock
FANS of Killing Eve know Fiona Shaw as Carolyn Martens, the cool, mysterious spymaster. In the latest series, the buttoned-up MI6 boss has been struggling to express her feelings over the death of her son Kenny. And daughter Geraldine’s efforts to make Carolyn “emote” have resulted in some brilliant tragic-comedy moments from the award-winning actress.
But, in real life, Fiona can speak movingly about the life-changing impact of loss. Because her visceral reaction to one woman’s heartrending story led them BOTH to new love and life.
Six years ago, while performing on Broadway in the one-woman play Testament of Mary, Fiona read a book called The Wave. It was Dr Sonali Deraniyagala’s account of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, which killed her husband, parents and two sons.
The Sri Lankan economist was herself found half-naked in a lagoon, clinging to a tree. And in the years that followed she turned to drugs and alcohol and contemplated suicide.
Fiona was so moved by the memoir she wanted to meet her. And when a friend introduced them the two women fell in love – and married.
Recalling their first meeting Fiona, 61, said: “I was so surprised that she was that person, not the person in the book.We spent half an hour chatting. And when I left I thought, ‘I have just met life’.”
IN A video interview from her home in Islington, north London, Fiona explains: “When I met Sonali my name was up in lights on Broadway – the pinnacle of what actors want,” she says. “But I was so weary of the entire thing.
“I was tired in my bones and I didn’t want to say that to anyone. So maybe this came at the right moment.
“Very quickly I thought, I just want to live with this person – though it was highly unlikely. But, thankfully, she thought the same – and it’s been a beautiful thing to happen at this stage of my life.”
Fiona, who previously had a relationship with the actress Saffron
Burrows, goes on: “Sonali brings everything to my life… fun, laughter, food (she’s a brilliant chef) companionship and steadiness.
“And she’s not at all interested in my filming life so we don’t talk about it at all. Instead we talk about life and family, so it means my identity has become my domestic identity, not as a public person, which I’m so pleased about.
“I’m married to a very unusual person but maybe it took a very unusual person to marry me.”
The star has spoken previously of being aware of the impact of tragedy on their lives.
“Sonali’s children, parents and husband were all killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, and I’m very cognisant of that” she said. “Its sorrow doesn’t dominate our life, but it definitely defines it. I understand the value of things by being with Sonali.
“It isn’t all just going to opening nights and filming, there is a real sense of how near death is to the person I live with.
“She lives knowing that at any moment the world could end because she lost her world. It has brought me into land, I suppose, about lots of things.”
And it has changed her whole view of marriage too. Speaking on the video, FIona goes on: “I don’t think I could have married in my 20s or 30s because I don’t think I was that kind of person.
“I made a decision when I was about 26 to give myself entirely to the whims of work and travel, and I began tearing around the world. But marriage has made me not want to travel at the same rate.
“A lot of actors live like students, and for a long time I had a small flat in Primrose Hill and lived abroad a lot. But in the past five years I have lived in a proper house.
I feel much more