THE DERRY GIRL who became one of the RICHEST women in the world
She was orphaned in her youth, almost wed a man who left his MS-stricken wife for her and is one of only 46 people Trump follows on Twitter. Meet Roma Downey... The
FOR many reasons, a particular childhood moment has stuck with actress Roma Downey forever. In the early 1970s, her native Northern Ireland was ravaged by war and one afternoon the British army took to the streets of the Bogside with armoured vehicles.
In Beechwood Avenue’s line of tidy terraced houses where Roma lived, her mother Maureen kept the family china under lock and key in the good room.
‘One day a large military truck drove down our street and as the house began to shake, we heard a loud crash come from the good room,’ she recalls. ‘My mother cried out as she ran down the hallway and she gasped when she saw what had happened.’
Months later, Maureen – herself an amateur actress – died of a heart attack when she was just 48. Roma was just 11 years old.
‘With her young life over too soon, I often wondered what special occasion was she saving that china for,’ Downey reflected. ‘Her silver wedding anniversary? My wedding day? My daughter’s christening? All celebrations that she wouldn’t live to see.’ It was one of the defining moments in the life of a star who is now named as one of the richest actresses in the world with a fortune of around €450million.
And her will to succeed was spurred on by the death of both her parents at a young age.
Born in 1960, Roma was nine when the Troubles broke out and violence swept through her home city. The stress of living in war-torn Derry with a young family no doubt took its toll on her beloved mother. And Roma clearly remembers how daily life was affected. ‘We were a city occupied and there were constant riots and explosions,’ she is quoted as saying. ‘I remember [Bloody Sunday] well – the horror of it and the darkness that overcame our city and community.’
Maureen’s death left a huge scar on Roma. ‘I felt as though my heart had broken into a thousand pieces,’ she said in her memoir Box Of Butterflies.
‘That wound is still tender. Sometimes tears come so quickly to my eyes and I have this deep longing to be held by her again.’
Her father Paddy, though a trained teacher, worked as a mortgage broker. Maureen was his second wife, and the second love he lost. As a result, Roma had four siblings much older than she was, and a slightly older brother.
Paddy nurtured his children through the Catholic faith and instilled in them the importance of both education and devotion to God. A typical Derry teenager, Downey studied at Thornhill College, rumoured to be the inspiration for the Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls, and still counts school pals among her good friends.
When she was leaving for art college in England her father told her: ‘Wherever you are in the world, I’ll leave a message on the moon and you leave one for me.’ She says: ‘There isn’t a moon cycle that goes by to this day that I don’t hear my dad saying he loves me.’
But in just a few short years, Paddy had also passed away. There is no doubt that Roma would trade all her vast fortune to spend more time with her beloved parents.
But their deaths also gave her a drive to succeed against the odds.
‘I lost my mother, I lost my father, our little house in Beechwood was sold when I was still in college so I didn’t have anywhere to call home. But, rather than be buried under that grief, you have to think, do I choose to be the victor or the victim of circumstances?
‘Of course it was difficult and I have missed them terribly over the years, but I think it made me more resourceful and courageous, and I have tried to live my life to make my parents proud of me,’ she said.
Roma studied drama in London before moving to Dublin where a stint at the Abbey Theatre led to a US tour with The Playboy Of The Western World.
Dazzled by the bright lights of Broadway, Roma moved to New York in 1991 to try her luck, working as a hat-check girl in a fancy restaurant on the Upper West Side to pay the rent while cramming in theatre work on and off Broadway when she could. But her big break wasn’t long coming, when she starred opposite Rex Harrison in The Circle. Yet her career on the New York stage would prove to be short-lived, for all the right reasons.
‘Much to my surprise, some television producers saw my performance and called me in to read for a mini-series called A Woman Named Jackie – a six-hour film about the life of Jackie Kennedy,’ she wrote in Box Of Butterflies.
‘My agency sent me the script and I read the first of six episodes. The material was compelling, but I didn’t know what character they were thinking of for me. I called my agent to ask. He said with a laugh, “Well, the title role, of course”.’
Playing the dark-haired beauty so beloved of the Irish diaspora proved to be Roma’s pivotal role and an Emmy award-winning one at that.
Keen to capitalise on the exposure, Downey upped sticks to Hollywood where her strong spirituality led her to consider a script called Angel’s Attic.
This would become Touched By An Angel, the long-running TV series that would put Downey in the homes of millions of Americans as Monica, an ethereal angel sent from heaven to help those in difficulty – a role she says was coloured by her own loss as a girl.
‘I felt deep in my soul that I had been prepared for this role by the loss I had experienced in my own life,’ she said.
But in spite of her successful career, Roma’s personal life was rather more chequered. Her first marriage to her drama school classmate, San Francisco actor Leland Orser, lasted just two years. Four years later she married TV director David Anspaugh in 1995. In 1996, and at the age of 36, Roma became a mother for the first time, giving birth to her daughter Reilly Marie Anspaugh. It was, Roma says, the point where she began to really heal from Maureen’s death.
But in spite of her joy at having a daughter, the marriage was not destined to last and the couple divorced in March 1998. In 2000, handsome married actor Michael Nouri arrived on the set of Touched By An Angel for what was meant to be a guest appearance but he ended up there for three years.
Despite his marital status, love blossomed between Roma and Nouri and the pair soon made their relationship public. Strangely, Nouri remained married to his wife Vicki Light, who was suffering from multiple sclerosis and was confined to a wheelchair.
Vicky told reporters at the time she had given the relationship her blessing as she wanted her husband to have a sex life.
‘I knew they were together,’ she said. ‘Michael confides in me about his romantic life. He called me every day, sometimes twice a day.’
After a split that was rumoured to be caused by Roma’s Catholic faith being at odds with their situation, Nouri filed for divorce and the pair were expected to marry. And yet, it caused a dent in Roma’s wholesome image.
She herself admitted later: ‘It was hard being accused of breaking up a marriage.’ The relationship with Nouri lasted three years but ended before a wedding in 2003. And to
I felt deep in my soul that I had been prepared for this role by the loss I had experienced in my life
make matters more crushing, the show that had banked Downey a considerable fortune was axed in April 2003. Roma had few financial worries but there is no doubt her career paid the price for the scandal surrounding her relationship with Nouri.
Stranger still are the circumstances of her third marriage, which would lead to Roma becoming one half of a Hollywood power couple with the world at their fingertips.
The actress was getting her nails done in a Malibu salon, when Londoner Mark Burnett just happened to be getting his hair cut a few chairs over. The two locked eyes three times. When she later asked the receptionist, ‘Who was that guy?’ the receptionist answered, ‘Funny, he just asked who you are.’
Born in the East End of London, Burnett had moved to America after serving two tours in the British army as a member of the Parachute Regiment. In fact, he walked the streets of Northern Ireland in the 1980s before serving in the Falklands.
He started out in the US working odd jobs before hitting on a successful business venture Eco-Challenge, a team-based racing event which involved riding, trekking, diving and more.
It was through this that he got his first break in TV as the executive producer of the hit series Survivor.
Since then he has conquered the television world with the likes of The Apprentice and The Voice and Roma has become more involved in producing series behind the scenes that are based on her faith. Roma is one of Hollywood’s biggest superpowers, and according to the recently released Sunday Times 2018 Rich List, is not just the second wealthiest person in Northern Ireland, but the second richest actress in the world, pipped only by Salma Hayek. She boasts another dubious distinction, as being one of only 46 people that Donald Trump follows on Twitter.
It’s behind the camera that she, along with her husband Mark Burnett, has wielded serious power. Thanks to the couple’s production company, Downey’s net worth is now estimated at around €411million.
Outside of their separate TV hits and spotting a gap of sorts in the market, the strongly spiritual couple turned their attentions to America’s huge Christian community. Just two years ago, they helped to co-produce a TV adaptation of The Bible, in which Roma played the Virgin Mary.
Much as they foretold, the mini-series was a massive hit for the History Channel when it aired, attracting a worldwide audience of 100million viewers.
‘As each week unfolded, we were deeply encouraged and we knew that it had touched a core,’ Roma said in a 2016 interview.
‘The Bible trended each night on Twitter, which was extraordinary, and we had all kinds of stars watching – with Oprah on there live-tweeting!’
Roma had attributed the success of the couple’s religious productions to their personal unbreakable bond. ‘It is a little bit like Romeo and Juliet. Our love becomes a little microcosm of what is possible,’ she has said.
‘Out of our love story together as a husband and wife producing team, we were able to bring The Bible series to television.’
Their latest project, Messiah – a modern-day tale about a man who appears in the Middle East claiming to be a divine messenger – has just been snapped up by TV streaming giant Netflix.
Sure enough, Mark and Roma, who married in 2007, live in true Hollywood splendour in the millionaire’s enclave of Malibu. They live in a 7,300 sq ft home on Malibu’s Paradise Cove that Burnett picked up in 2005 for $25million (€21million) – a far cry from the more modest Beechwood Avenue in Derry.
Roma married Burnett – who has two sons, James and Cameron, from a previous relationship – in 2007. For many years, she has been a volunteer for Operation Smile, which provides surgery to children with cleft palettes. She and Burnett have also been on many international medical missions to areas like Nicaragua, Jordan and Honduras. Amid it all, she completed a master’s degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica. And in 2014 she was conferred with an honorary doctorate at the University of Ulster.
Even with a breakneck schedule, Roma still enjoys regular trips home to her native Derry.
‘I have brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews all still living over there so I like to go back and visit every summer,’ she says. All the while, her faith has always been close to hand, and she notes that the rosary is part of her ‘daily morning workout’.
Undoubtedly her parents, the two special angels who gave Roma the drive to succeed, are remembered in those prayers.
‘While I’m blessed to have had a successful career in the United States, that success has been built on all that I learned growing up in Derry,’ she revealed.
‘Integrity, character, tenacity, the value of working hard, daring to dream big, and to always have a sense of humour and not take myself too seriously.’