Atkinson, wife split on grounds of ‘unreasonable’ behaviour
LONDON: The British press has reported that Rowan Atkinson, star of “Mr Bean”, has divorced his wife of more than 24 years Sunetra Sastry.
Sastry had cited “unreasonable behaviour” as the reason for the divorce.
Last year, Atkinson, 60, had left Sastry for a comedy actress nearly half his age.
He has been estranged from Sunetra, a BBC make-up artiste, since they split last year. Neither he nor his ex-wife — who lodged the petition — were present for the hearing.
Atkinson and Sunetra married in 1990 in New York City, and have two children together — Ben, 22, and Lily, 20. However, Atkinson has been dating comedy actress Louise Ford, 32, for nearly 18 months after they met on the set of the West End comic play Quartermaine’s Terms.
Ford had previously starred alongside ‘The Inbetweeners’ Joe Thomas and Simon Bird in Sky’s ‘Chickens’. Atkinson used to date comedienne Leslie Ash in the 1980s, before meeting Sunetra in the latter part of the decade and settling down.
A source told The Sun: “Sunetra was deeply upset to be replaced by such a younger woman.”
Atkinson, who keeps his private life shielded from the media, is one of Britain’s wealthiest entertainment figures with a reported personal fortune of roughly £70 million (RM463 million). He made his name doing distinctive stand-up comedy and starring in the sketch show ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’, before finding his most famous roles in ‘Mr Bean’ and ‘Blackadder’.
He and his former wife were building an £11 million home in rural Oxfordshire at the time of their split roughly a year ago. He has moved into a £4 million London home, while Sunetra is living at a £21 million (RM139 million) mansion in the capital.