Looking out for Sheridan Hannah Betts on her whirlwind romance
Emotional outpourings onstage and now a whirlwind engagement – Hannah Betts hopes Smith’s story won’t end in tears this time
The West End star Sheridan Smith – whose life over the last couple of years has proved “troubled”, to use the conventional tabloid parlance – has been teasing fans with talk of a new love interest.
Performing at the Albert Hall last week, she informed her 5,000-strong audience: “My boyfriend loves this song. Whoops, did I let that slip?” She is said to have gone on: “Yes, I’ve got a boyfriend. Don’t act so b----surprised,” and continued to refer to this mystery man throughout the evening.
At the Edinburgh Playhouse two days later, the 36-year-old reflected on her romantic misadventures, remarking: “Why do I keep going back for more? Maybe ’cause I’m addicted to love,” before revealing that she had a boyfriend, but “it won’t last”. She also, reportedly, flashed her underwear and gave out her hotel room number to a male fan.
Now comes the news that Smith is apparently engaged to a 28-year-old former insurance broker, whom she met on the online dating site Tinder less than three months ago. The actress is said to be “head over heels” in love with fiancé Jamie Horn, and the proud owner of a £10,000 ring. The couple are reported to have already moved in together, planning to marry next year. Fans may recall that it was only last June that the actress parted from her “dream man”, model Graham Nation, whom she fell for after just a few weeks, and the loss of whom left her devastated.
Life imitates art; never more so than for showgirl Sheridan, currently touring the country with an act purporting to be a musical rendition of herself, expressed through a series of epically histrionic cover songs.
Smith may be dressed as a pastiche Marilyn Monroe, however, the effect is pure Judy Garland: the reopening and probing of wounds, interspersed with mawkishly relevant musical numbers.
Ever the epitome of the sad clown, Smith refers racily to “my Fanny” (Brice, the role she played in Funny
Girl) and dons rubber breasts for Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5.
Between ritualised emotional outpourings, she has also announced that she is not pregnant, “just fat,” joked that she was knocking back vodka rather than water, and seemed extremely emotional. According to one Albert Hall audience member: “There were a lot of tears. Some songs she barely finished.”
Our heroine also alludes to the much-publicised breakdown that she experienced two years ago with the words: “I’ve been crazy for a couple of years. You might have read about it,” before launching into a boisterous recital of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy.
The show concludes with a one-woman emotional Armageddon featuring the Dreamgirls torch song
And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going which she sobs through, and a segue from I Will Survive into Happy.
Someone is making a lot of money from producing all this pain, and it may not be our heroine.
And, now, the engagement. Obviously, the hope is that this will be an extremely joyous and longlasting union, as Smith has herself expressed a desire for. However, the hurtling speed, self-publicity and volatility with which it is already associated do not bode entirely well.
So you’re in love – fantastic! – why not wait a little while to get to know each other, go through those first few rows, and let the shine come off it a bit to see what’s really there?
None of us is perfect. We all have ups and downs, in our romantic lives, not least. Some of us – myself included – have also fallen prey to depression and addictive behaviour.
However, few of us seem to crave the drama like Ms Smith; addicted to love as she is to attention.
The Lincolnshire-born star is unquestionably talented: boasting two Oliviers, a Bafta and an OBE by her early thirties. Even those of us less beguiled by the show tunes find ourselves enamoured. I caught her in Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path in 2012, and she was mesmerising – in an unstarry role that nevertheless stole the show and won her several awards.
However, the actress has no less a talent for public implosion. If this sounds hypocritical in an article that serves to make her erratic behaviour
‘Why do I keep going back for more? Maybe I’m addicted to love’
‘I’ve been crazy for a couple of years. You might have read about it…’
still more public, then regard the self-consciousness in the game she plays with audiences and journalists alike. Her show is unashamedly about its star: her struggles, her triumphs – in a two-fingered salute to the watching world that no less seeks to monetise this interest. In discussing her lacerating depression and anxiety during her father’s illness and subsequent death in 2016, she commented: “My life was falling apart and I didn’t tell anyone.”
Only she did – through behaviour such as appearing drunk on stage and abusing audience members on Twitter, abreacting her misery through so many cries for help, as she now performs it nightly.
Interviews have revealed her to be crippled by nerves; anxiety an ever-present issue.
As she told The Daily Telegraph in 2014: “When I moved to London at 16, I was a real go-getter, but it [the insecurity] has come [with success]… I started having these panic attacks on stage.”
Smith also seems to feel unease about being a hoofer rather than a book-learning type, rising through television and musicals rather than attending theatre school, or university. Despite her awards, she manifests an acute case of impostor syndrome, declaring: “I always feel like a bit of a fraud, but so far I’ve not been found out.”
On performing with Dame Maggie Smith, she observed: “I can’t help thinking, ‘I don’t deserve to be here’… I spend most of the time feeling like I’m totally blagging it.”
Other actors tell of Smith as being like Longfellow’s girl with the curl: “When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid.” Going on stage can be terrifying enough, without the fear that one’s fellow performers will provide theatre of their own by going off the rails. The fondness she inspires tends to evaporate under such circumstances.
Many troubled performers speak of “Dr Theatre” – the stage’s ability to distract them from physical and mental torment. However, the attention it brings can also inspire a dependency that only adds to such torment. One can’t help feeling that Smith needs help rather than the audience she feels she thrives off – addicted to love, addicted to attention, addicted to her own high-octane narrative.
The last thing anyone undergoing emotional crises of Smith’s enormity needs is to throw herself into an intense relationship. At her Albert Hall performance, she followed Barkley’s song with the remark: “Do you know what really makes me crazy? Men. They play head games.” Well, so do women, and the two parties can contentedly coexist driving each other screwball.
Where are the actress’s friends in all this, the “urban family” she is said to telephone in distraught 3am moments? Who is looking out for Sheridan? Clearly not the management team so invested in the rolling car crash.
Not yet two years on from a breakdown, drama all about her, her behaviour still seemingly unstable, this is a time for friends not spectators – and certainly not self-interested money men.