TV star Morrissey and novelist Freud split after 13 years
WITH his brooding good looks and her fascinating family history, actor David Morrissey and novelist Esther Freud were one of society’s most celebrated showbusiness couples.
So I am sad to report that the couple, who met at drama school 26 years ago, have separated. They had been married 13 years.
‘It’s a great shame, but they just couldn’t make it work any longer,’ one of their many friends tells me. ‘They are making sure that the interests of their three children come first.’
The couple, who shared a house in Hampstead, are now living separately in North London.
As recently as last year, Esther, who is the 55-year- old daughter of late artist Lucian Freud, was talking affectionately in interviews about Morrissey, 54, the star of television dramas including The Walking Dead and The Deal, in which he played Gordon Brown.
Morrissey, who has been hailed as one of the most talented actors of his generation, did, though, highlight the great differences in their backgrounds. While he is the son of a Liverpudlian cobbler and a mother who worked for Littlewoods, Esther’s bohemian childhood formed the basis of her acclaimed novel Hideous Kinky, which was turned into a 1998 film starring Kate Winslet.
The great-granddaughter of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Esther is one of Lucian Freud’s 14 children. Her mother is the writer and gardener Bernardine Coverley.
Morrissey has credited Esther with helping to teach him self-discipline.
‘Suddenly,’ he said, ‘I was with someone who imposed a work structure upon themselves.
‘There we were, we’d just met and fallen in love and suddenly, even in my own flat, I was outside my bedroom waiting for two o’clock so I could go in and kiss her.’
Freud and Morrissey declined to comment.