Silent Witness

Her roles over the past 20 years have ranged from fragile beauties – Mr Darcy’s younger sister Georgiana in the seminal BBC TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (her first role, while she was still in her first year at Oxford) and Garnie in the children’s classic Ballet Shoes – to the positively evil, such as Vanessa Hamilton, the people trafficker in Anglo-French thriller The Tunnel.

In between, of course, is the ongoing role of forensic pathologist Nikki Alexander in Silent Witness, a character Emilia is still playing after more than 12 years, despite the turnover of her various co-stars. The series gives her what she calls ‘inner security’, as well as a crew who know her inside out. The financial security it gives is also important to her: ‘Actors like to work. I need to pay my mortgage.’ (She lives with Rose in a ‘cottage-y house’ in Acton, West London, five minutes from the Silent Witness studio.) It is telling that security is more important to her than naked ambition. ‘ Silent Witness is part of my history. I’ve felt very happy there and love the people I work with. It’s not something I would want to give up.’

Silent Witness was, she admits, always calling her back from Los Angeles, where she and Jared shared a home. ‘I never really gave it a good length of time out there,’ she says quietly. ‘I liked the fact that LA was a clean slate professionally, and managers and agents were always saying to me, “You’ve got to stay out here and give it a chance.”’ She has the classic English looks – as well as the talent – to make it in the US, but, she admits, ‘I was always coming back to London. Home was here, family was here. Nothing was ever permanent enough in LA.’

The transatlantic nature of their relationship put the marriage under huge pressure and this was exacerbated when, in 2007, she miscarried their child. They filed for divorce two years later – a double sadness that Emilia

is part of my history. I wouldn’t want to give it up

has worked through in therapy.

Looking back, she acknowledges that she probably should have taken more opportunities in the US, ‘but I know perfectly well you can’t go back and change things’.

Emilia’s work ethic has expressed itself in a constant drive to do and be better. ‘Pushing myself has never really gone away. It’s not about achieving more, it’s about what’s in front of me [and doing it well]. It stems from appreciating what my mum and dad had done regarding my education when I was a child. I knew what it cost them as actors when sometimes they weren’t working and I wanted to make sure they knew I didn’t take that for granted. I don’t think my attitude has changed since then.’

This sweetness is why, within the industry, Emilia is someone everyone loves to work with. Still, she is aware that work could dry up as she ages: ‘I’m lucky that I am in my 40s and working. [As an actor] your work life is in the hands of others, so I sort of expect at some point…’ she trails off.

‘But I’d have to do something else. Gardening or floristry, something outdoors. I’d love to do that,’ she says. ‘I’ve created a country garden at my London house. I remember seeing it covered in wisteria on one of my first days of filming Silent Witness and I thought to myself, “Now, that’s a house I dream of living in.”’

Delicious continues on Sky 1 on Friday at 9pm