MASSIVE HUNT FOR FOYLE’S WAR STAR
Police fears for Honeysuckle Weeks
POLICE were last night searching for Foyle’s War star Honeysuckle Weeks after she was reported missing.
Fears were growing for the welfare of the actress after family and friends were said to be “frantic” with worry.
Last night police appealed for help in tracking down the star who found fame playing driver Samantha Stewart alongside Michael Kitchen as Foyle in the hit ITV wartime drama.
Detective Kate Witt, in a direct appeal to her, said: “If you read this, Honeysuckle, please get in touch to let us know you are ok.”
Honeysuckle, who has a four-year-old son, was last seen in Chichester, West Sussex, at 9pm on Thursday and was reported missing an hour later. Relatives said the actress, who is 5ft 4ins and has cropped gingery blonde hair and was last seen wearing a blue anorak and faded blue jeans, had spoken of feeling anxious before her disappearance.
She is due to celebrate her 37th birthday on Monday.
Police say it is not clear why the actress had been visiting Chichester.
Yesterday Detective Witt, of Sussex Police, said: “We are
concerned about Honeysuckle as her recent behaviour has concerned family and friends and she has expressed to them she is feeling anxious.
“Although she travels around a lot and has links in London and has family in Wiltshire, it is unlike her not to be in touch with family.”
Honeysuckle, who once dated actor Hugh Grant, married hypnotherapist and retired city broker Lorne Stormonth-Darling, 53, in a Buddhist ceremony in the Himalayas in 2005. It was followed two years later by a ceremony in West Sussex.
The couple have a home in Kensal Green, west London, but in recent weeks Honeysuckle had been staying with her former advertising executive father Robin, sister Perdita and brother Rollo at the family home in Vauxhall, south London.
Banned
The Roedean and Oxford University educated actress had rented a cottage in the hamlet of Byworth in Sussex close to her 59-year-old mother Susan’s home in Petworth.
In February, Honeysuckle was ordered to wear an electronic tag after she was caught speeding while banned from driving.
The actress had been travelling on the A3 in south-west London on August 17 last year with a child in the passenger seat who was not wearing a seat belt.
She received an electronically monitored four-week curfew, requiring her not to leave her twobedroom terraced cottage home between 9pm and 7am.
Honeysuckle was also disqualified from driving for four months after admitting the offence and ordered to pay a £250 fine, £85 costs and a £60 victim surcharge. Her acting credits include TV shows Close Relations, Ladies & Their Gentleman, Midsomer Murders, Poirot, Death In Paradise and The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. She had recently finished working on Lewis for ITV and Sky mystery The Five.
In an interview in May last year, she described how the filming of Foyle’s War, first shown on ITV in 2002, had come during “a period of my life where the most life-changing things have happened”, from children and marriage to the “usual slings and arrows that life is beset with”. Last night neighbour Paul Wincott said the actress had not been seen for some time at her £750,000 Victorian-style terraced home in London, which has been put up for sale.
Mr Wincott, 52, who lives two doors away, said he had seen Mr Stormonth-Darling but Honeysuckle had not been there for “a couple of months and even when I did see her, she was dropping something off. It didn’t look as if she was staying”.
Police last night urged anyone with information about Honeysuckle’s disappearance to contact them on 101.