THE LIFE OF RILEY

We find out what keeps actor Charlotte Riley’s feet on the ground

Only a Northerner would ask for a mug of tea on a boiling hot day. ‘Hello! Hiya! Lovely to meet you!’ Charlotte Riley chirps, greeting everyone on the shoot with a warmth that immediately puts them at ease. She’s one of those women who looks girl-next-door pretty when she’s make-upfree, and drop-dead gorgeous after a slick of eyeliner and a dab of lippie. She’s also one of those women who would hate that the first thing anyone mentioned about her were her looks, so let’s move on, swiftly, to the far more important and interesting subject of her work. You might have caught her over the summer in Swimming With Men, a Full Monty-style Britcom about a male synchronised swimming team. You will definitely have caught her in Peaky Blinders, in which she has played May Carleton since 2014. And you will definitely want to be catching her in Press, a new primetime BBC drama by Mike Bartlett which is on course to be every bit as addictive as his last hit, Doctor Foster.

Riley plays Holly Evans, deputy news editor of The Herald, a newspaper navigating its way through an increasingly fast-paced 24-hour news cycle blighted by the expanding threat of fake news. ‘She’s a bugger,’ is how Riley cheerfully describes her character. ‘There are likeable aspects – she’s pretty honourable – but she’s pretty tough. It’s great to play a female protagonist that isn’t all, “Hi! I’m really great fun!”, though.’

She admits that before playing Holly, she didn’t read a lot of newspapers. ‘I liked to read The Guardian and The Sun, and the complete polarity of those. I kept up with what was going on, but didn’t consume on a daily basis.’ Either playing Holly has changed her or she’s one of those rare actors who would rather ask about others than talk about herself, but she grills me on my own journalistic career with such genuine curiosity that it’s a job steering her back to herself again.

As a celebrity married to another celebrity (her husband is the actor Tom Hardy), in an era of hyper-exposure, does she think it’s possible to stay under the radar? ‘Erm. I wouldn’t really call myself a celebrity,’ she says, with the slightest shard of iciness. ‘That’s a title that’s bestowed upon you as opposed to something you might choose yourself. I’m a really private person and I keep my life as private as I want to. It’s just down to me, in situations like you and I having a conversation now, and choosing what I do and don’t want to talk about. And also not succumbing to the pressure of telling details about my life to make the interview more exciting. I may come across as boring, but I’m really happy to appear boring if that keeps my children’s anonymity safe. The people in my life have their own privacy. That’s priceless. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.’

She has never divulged the name of her and Hardy’s first child, and asks if I’d mind not mentioning that she is pregnant with her second (alas, the tabloids out her a few days after we meet). ‘It’s taking their choice away,’ she explains. ‘They might want to live their lives in a completely different way, and I want to give them that choice.’

She will, however, share the name of their dog, Blue, a French bulldog who is ‘very cute, but farts really badly to the point where it actually makes me gag. Tom’s always had dogs, so that’s always been a big part of his life, and now mine, too. He’s like Doctor Dolittle with doggies.’

Now that she’s mentioned Tom… I say, querulously. ‘Come on,’ she laughs. ‘Tell me the obligatory Tom questions.’ There is nothing worse than that point in an interview where your subject is clearly bracing themselves to be grilled about things but they’d rather chop off their arm than talk about them. The Posh and Becks of the acting world, Charlotte and Tom are most definitely not: theirs is a low-key relationship, conducted less in front of the cameras than on the sofa watching Netflix. They met while working on Wuthering Heights in 2009, got engaged in 2010 and had a close-friends-only wedding in 2014, welcoming their first child in 2015. Riley is also stepmother to Hardy’s 10-year-old son. I tentatively ask the secret to a happy marriage.

‘Oh, God, f*cking hell, that was a big question, wasn’t it? I don’t know. Marry the right person? I think that’s probably it.’

Is Tom a feminist? ‘Depends. What’s your definition?’

Someone who believes in equality, and in equal rights for women and men.

‘Well, then, yes.’

Does this work in practical terms? Does he share the load when it comes to running the house?

‘I’M REALLY HAPPY TO APPEAR BORING IF THAT’S WHAT KEEPS MY CHILDREN’S ANONYMITY SAFE’

‘Oh, yes. Following on from being a feminist. I don’t think there is a male/female thing. I just think people are better at different things. I, for example, have a penchant for recycling, and hate putting petrol in the car. Composting,

I’m slightly obsessed with. My children are now slightly obsessed, too. We have the worm bins, the food for the worms. We’re good at growing strawberries.’

Does it ever feel claustrophobic, being married to another actor? That temptation to talk shop all the time? ‘No. Even with my girlfriends or friends who are actors, I just feel like you either have people in your life [for whom] that’s the be-all and end-all in their life, in which case that’s all you talk about. But I find that the people in my life, we have other shit going on, so we have plenty of other things to talk about. Especially now, at the age where people are having children.’

She says the biggest surprise about becoming a mum was ‘the amount of your child’s bodily fluids that make it into your mouth. He managed to pee in my mouth, vomit in my mouth, spit in my mouth… and the little bogeys. Trying to get the bogeys out. And how you don’t care. And how obsessed by poo I’ve become – looking and making sure it’s all the right shape, size and colour. And how nothing is more important to me than that. The real answer is that it’s the most important thing in my life. And then the other side of it is that you just don’t sweat the small stuff. I used to spend ages learning lines for auditions, and now I’m lucky if I look at them for 15-20 minutes on the Tube. I don’t worry about stuff as much.’

She says she dislikes ‘this ethos that we’ve got in Britain of the longer hours you work, the more you care about your job – such bullshit.’ Rather than simply carping about it, however, Riley has launched a brilliantly practical scheme to help new mothers return to the workplace, something that’s particularly hard to do in the acting profession, with its often long and antisocial hours. Her project, Ready, Set, Play!, sets out to provide Ofsted-checked nursery buses for film and TV sets, allowing cast and crew to have on-site childcare that caters specifically to their needs. ‘It’s brilliant that we’ve got all this training in place for female sparks, female clapper loaders, female camera operators, so there’s loads of women doing loads of typically male jobs,’ she reasons.

‘But then they all get to 30 and there’s no provision within our industry to keep them.

People complain there are no female stories being told. How do you expect there to be female stories told when you nurture directors and writers to the age of 30, they have children, and then there’s no way of them staying in the industry unless they’re fortunate enough to be in a position where they can afford one-on-one childcare? And that’s the 1% of the 1%. Having on-set childcare will help balance out this inequality.’

The idea came to her after she became a parent herself. She describes her first acting role after giving birth to her son (playing Catherine, Princess of Wales in the ‘future history’ TV drama King Charles III), and realising how easy it was to have him on set, compared with how difficult it was for those in less elevated, well-paid positions. ‘I started talking to other actors and crew members and discovered that people, particularly the men, would get misty-eyed about how even being able to bring their child on set for two days a week would completely change their lives. It would mean their partners could get a part-time job, which would change their outlook on life, as well as their relationships with their children. Ready, Set, Play! isn’t a company by women for women. It’s a company that supports parents.’

It’s possibly their altruism that so endears Riley and Hardy (who has been an ambassador for The Prince’s Trust since 2010) to Prince Harry: both were guests at his May wedding to Meghan Markle, to the surprise of even some of their closest friends. ‘I had a really lovely day. It was great. We had an amazing time,’ she says. ‘I had quite a few texts from people going, “You’re at the f*cking Royal Wedding? Why didn’t you tell me?” I don’t know… I’ve always been like that, since I was a kid. I remember taking my mum and dad to see my A level artwork exhibition, and they were like, “We didn’t even know you could paint.” It’s not for any reason other than that I just [prefer to] crack on with something.’

That, and the fact that she is genuinely humble, and the least precious actor you are likely to meet. Tom Hardy is lucky to have her. Actually, they’re lucky to have each other. So what if they have a flatulent dog? Even paradise has flies.

Charlotte will be seen in Press on BBC and

Dark Heart on ITV, both on TV this autumn

‘I USED TO SPEND AGES LEARNING LINES FOR AUDITIONS. NOW, I DON’T WORRY ABOUT STUFF AS MUCH’