Peaky Blinders star Helen leaves £850K to husband
Actor Damian and kids named in her will
HELEN McCrory left her £850,000 estate to husband Damian Lewis in a will made public days after it emerged he is dating again.
The Peaky Blinders star, who played Shelby family matriarch Aunt Polly in the BBC show, died in April last year.
She had fought a secret battle with breast cancer, having kept her diagnosis from all but those closest to her.
Helen, 52, left behind her husband of 14 years and their two children Manon, 15, and Gulliver, 14.
According to probate documents, she put her fortune – valued at £857,257.12 – into a trust for Damian, their children and any grandchildren.
The will appoints Damian as one of the trustees, along with HM the Queen’s bankers Coutts. Following her death,
Damian, 51, spoke of Helen having urged him to live life to the full. The Emmy Award-winning star of Band of Brothers, Homeland and Wolf Hall, said: “She said to us from her bed, ‘I want Daddy to have girlfriends, lots of them, you must all love again, love isn’t possessive, but you know, Damian, try at least to get though the funeral without snogging someone’.”
This week, it looked as though Damian has found love again.
The Billions star is dating The Kills singer Alison Mosshart, 43, after they were seen at a London club. They were first photographed together last month at a fundraising party for London’s National Gallery. They have also been spotted at the Serpentine Gallery’s annual summer party and last weekend at the British Formula One Grand Prix at Silverstone.
Speaking from Florida, Mosshart’s mum Vivien, 76, said: “I don’t know how much flak I’m going to get for all of this but of course we are excited for her.
“They have mutual friends. I don’t know exactly how they met but I’m fine with it. If she’s happy, we are happy. I’m yet to meet him but certainly I’d like to.”
Damian announced yesterday he is to release his debut album next year and
play two live dates next month. He will sing at a show at Omeara near London Bridge on Thursday, August 4 before performing at Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire on Sunday, August 7.
Having played classical guitar since the age of 13, Lewis graduated to the steel string acoustic and spent his early 20s busking in London before rediscovering the guitar during lockdown.
He said: “I’m looking forward to getting out there and playing the songs I’ve been recording for my debut album. Be good to be back on stage, this time with a guitar in my hand.”
This summer, he was made a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to drama and charity.
Be good to be back on stage, this time with guitar in my hand
DAMIAN LEWIS ON THE MAKING OF DEBUT ALBUM
THE loss of a partner can rip apart every aspect of your life, but no matter how old you are, should that mean the end of a romantic life? Or, when you have loved so deeply, do you yearn for that again?
How soon is too soon? It is a question faced sadly by too many, including actor Damian Lewis who has gone public with his relationship with Alison Mosshart, 14 months after his wife Helen McCrory died from cancer.
Bowel Babe campaigner Deborah James, who died last month, also urged husband Sebastien to find love again.
Widowers are more likely to move on than widows but how hard is it?
Here, one couple – Lee Cripps and Anna Cripps-Clark – share their stories of finding love again after loss...
LEE’S STORY
I did have times I worried about starting a new relationship and about how the girls might take it
IT looks like a charming drawing of their family – Lee, wife Anna, the four children they have between them and their pet dog – in front of their home in a human pyramid formation, right.
But if you look more closely at the picture, which was a wedding gift from Lee to Anna, you will see two robins perched on a window ledge, each with a letter on their breasts.
The tiny A and S represent Lee’s first wife Alex and Anna’s husband Steve. Both tragically lost to cancer.
Lee met Alex in 1996 while they were working in a supermarket, and quickly hit it off. They became engaged after only a year and married in 2003, before having twins Sophie and Lauren, 11.
“Alex was kind and helpful, and would always go the extra mile,” recalls Lee, 43. But their happy life collapsed when marketing worker Alex was diagnosed with a tumour in February 2014.
Her decline towards the end was rapid, something Lee says was especially hard. Alex died in January 2019, aged just 40.
“Over Christmas she became weaker and died around two weeks later. We weren’t expecting it to happen so soon.
“Our world collapsed. I tried to maintain a sense of normality for the children, sticking to a routine and carrying on working,” he says.
Struggling with his loss, IT consultant Lee joined a support group.
Four months after Alex’s death he met Anna, 47, who had lost her husband Steve just over a year before, and they made a connection.
“It was clear we had a lot of similarities. We had children of a similar age, lived nearby and had associations with some of the same places, and the shared experience of loss,” says Lee.
“At first, it was a friendship but it blossomed into something more over the next few weeks.”
Lee didn’t see starting a relationship as moving on but rather as moving forward. In the later stages of Alex’s illness, she became emotionally detached and he says it felt as if he had been grieving her for a longer period.
“I did have times I worried about starting a new relationship,” says Lee. “I wondered if it was the right life change, and was especially concerned about how the girls might take it.”
When Lee told the twins in July 2019, they were delighted. “The girls were very excited, reactions on the whole were very positive. I found out Alex had told my mum she hoped I wouldn’t stay on my own. I am still close to Alex’s parents. They are very supportive and have taken Anna in.”
When the first lockdown was announced in March 2020, Lee moved into Anna’s home in Woodley, Berks, with his daughters.
Then, in November 2020, Lee took Anna out for a meal and proposed. The ring had two blue and two pink sapphires to represent their children.
In February this year they tied the knot in front of 20 family and friends at a register office. But Alex and Steve remain at the forefront of their minds. “We still talk about them both daily and with the children too,” he says.
While people may criticise him for remarrying so soon, Lee says you can’t tell your heart what to feel.
He says: “One thing losing partners has taught Anna and I is tomorrow isn’t promised, so why go through life saying you can’t find happiness again?
“You don’t have a finite amount of love to give. Loving a new person doesn’t change the love you have for your partner who died.”
She lay in hospital, Steve Clark knew he had only a few days left and told his wife of 10 years, Anna, his final hopes and wishes – he wanted her to find a new partner after he had gone.
It was a request she thought she could never grant.
“Steve told me I wasn’t good on my own and said he didn’t want me to be alone for the rest of my life,” she recalls. “I told him I couldn’t do that, and I didn’t want another man.”
It was March 2018, and Steve, 48, was living out his final days after skin cancer had spread around his body, causing devastating seizures and mobility problems.
His death crumbled Anna’s world and the first year without her husband was extremely tough.
“I was trying to deal with the grief of our sons Daniel and Sam, as well as mine,” she says. “When the boys went to bed, I’d write letters and diary entries to Steve to talk to him. It helped me get the cycling emotions I was feeling on paper.”
On the anniversary of Steve’s death, Anna, who works as a Head of School, attended a support group and met Lee.
Sparks flew and they began messaging regularly. A few weeks after they met, Anna went for dinner with Lee and that night they kissed.
However, Anna admits that initially she felt guilty.
“I hadn’t been looking to meet anyone romantically,” says Anna. “I had a lot of trouble coming to terms with it and thinking, ‘Is this right?’.
“I felt like I was cheating on Steve to start with. It took a while to reconcile the fact that being with Lee was OK because Steve isn’t here any more, and I’m still young and have a life to still live.
“Lee and I could help each other with our children and our grief as he was in the same boat. I also felt Steve would have been at peace with it, as he had told me to find somebody else.”
Anna and Lee met up with their children, going on day trips as a group.
Initially, the pair told them they were just friends but in July 2019 they sat down with them separately, saying they were now a couple. While Lee’s daughters took the news well, Daniel, 14, and Sam, 11, were upset.
“It seemed that having a new man around reminded them of their father,” says Anna.
“That was the difficult thing, particularly with Daniel. He wanted his dad back and didn’t want this other person in his life.
“Things improved slowly – I gave the boys time to talk about how they felt.”
Anna also had difficulties with some of Steve’s family. “From their perspective, it felt like I’d forgotten Steve and no longer cared about him but nothing could be further from the truth.
“I thought very carefully about what I was doing with Lee and talked to a lot of people about it. I came to the conclusion that it was my life and I just had to do what felt right.”
Anna says moving Lee and his girls into her home during lockdown helped them become a happy unit.
“Living with each other helped, as the boys got to know Lee very well,” says Anna. “Daniel began to see that Lee was there to support him.”
After Lee and Anna got engaged they bought a house together, moving to Charvil, Berks, in October 2021.
Anna decided to keep Steve’s surname and add Lee’s after they married in February.
She says: “It was something important to Lee and I. It is about remembering past and present.”
Anna is well aware that there can still be something of a stigma around widowers and widows remarrying.
“It’s a difficult concept for people to understand but you can love two people at the same time,” she adds.
“I still talk about Steve and chat to him in my head – because I’m now married to Lee, it doesn’t mean that I love Steve any less.”
For advice and support, please visit widowedandyoung.org.uk
I felt like I was cheating at first but realised I still had a life to live after my husband died