SHERIDAN SMITH: ‘God knows when my wedding will happen!’

After a turbulent time battling mental health issues, actress Sheridan Smith has bounced back – and she credits country living with helping her find happiness I

t’s been six months since Sheridan Smith revealed she was “finally in a good place” following a secret mental health battle that threatened her impressive career.

Following the heartbreaking death of her beloved dad Colin from cancer in 2016, reports of Sheridan’s volatile relationships and out-of-control partying emerged. A year later, she suffered a breakdown and was forced to pull out of a number of shows for West End musical Funny Girl, later saying she “just couldn’t continue – I’d lost my mind”. Thankfully, after receiving the rest and care she needed, the 37-year- old star returned to Funny Girl to critical acclaim.

TYING THE KNOT

Sheridan then downloaded dating app Tinder last year and met her prince. Following a whirlwind romance with former insurance broker Jamie Horn – who is eight years her junior – they got engaged in May.

When we meet up with the star ahead of her new TV show, Cleaning Up, she can’t help showing off her sparkly engagement ring – but she tells us, “There’s no big day yet. I’ve got quite a lot on until 2020, and at the minute I’m just trying to get through all these next jobs. But I’m excited about everything, and I’m also ready to get back into acting after doing the album [A Northern Soul, released late last year].

“There’s no chance yet of being able to fit in a wedding and I’m still just going, ‘Ooh, I’m engaged to be married!’ God knows when it will happen. It will probably be with the donkeys somewhere, one day…”

“The donkeys” is reference to Sheridan’s new life on a farm in the Buckinghamshire countryside with Jamie and their rescue animals. In her ITV documentary, Sheridan Smith: Coming Home, in November, she insisted the dark times were behind her, crediting the love of Jamie and their country living.

TOXIC ROMANCES

Although she’s one of the nation’s bestloved stars and was honoured with an OBE in 2015 for her services to television, she’s also become known for her dramatic love life.

She dated her Gavin & Stacey co-star James Corden for two years until 2009, and called him “the love of [her] life” before their split. Then, in 2014, Geordie Shore bad boy Ricci Guarnaccio claimed he’d enjoyed a steamy weekend with Sheridan. Later that year, she began an on/off relationship with Hollyoaks actor and dad-of-three Greg Wood while he was divorcing wife Catherine Milburn – but their romance fizzled out in 2016 after Sheridan accused him of being involved with his Hollyoaks co-star Tamara Wall.

In 2015, it was reported that she’d had a fling with The Enemy rocker Andy Hopkins – although he denied it. Then her last relationship, with model Graham Nation, collapsed in 2017 after six months together.

Looking back, Sheridan believes she wasn’t in the right headspace for those romances. She recently reflected, “I kissed a lot of frogs. But I guess I wasn’t in the right place to give anything. I didn’t even love myself, so I wasn’t able to love anyone properly. They were always toxic, those relationships, because of drinking or whatever… But Jamie, he’s really together.”

SAFE HAVEN

She also admits that being away from her old manic city lifestyle has helped her to recover.

“I wanted to get away from London so I moved away to the countryside,” she tells