‘‘I don’t want to be real I want to be AMAndA Holden!”
Fay Ripley, 52, talks to Hayley Minn about Cold Feet, being smug about her family and why she believes a blow-dry can cure anything…
he may be one of the most recognisable faces on TV, but there’s no denying Fay Ripley is as down to earth as they come. As soon as we meet the actress on our shoot, with her 12-year-old son Sonny in tow, she apologises, “I’m so sorry, he’s off school sick today!” And, throughout the day, Fay provides us with non-stop laughter.
Most famous for her portrayal of Jenny Gifford in Cold Feet, Fay has played the character since 1997, and in the current series she’s sadly been diagnosed with breast cancer. In real life, Fay lives in London with husband Daniel Lapaine, who played Hugh Jarvis in The Durrells, their daughter Parker, 16, and Sonny.
Playing someone with cancer is not
the same as having cancer, so no one has to feel sorry for me. People always ask what research I’ve done and sadly I didn’t have to do any because loads of people I know have or have had cancer. It’s in all of our lives, and it’s probably the one subject you don’t have to research at all because it’s so present and so there for us all in one form or another.
All the women I know who have had breast cancer have dealt with it from
the outside amazingly. In my head, I wouldn’t deal with it anywhere near as well. I would be laying it on with a trowel, making everyone look after me 24/7 and I’d be terrified. But actually all of these women show an unbelievable strength and sense of humour.
I lost my dad last year. It’s not the same thing at all but equally complicated, not straightforward, but the grief comes in and out. You find yourself shopping, however upset you are, and then you find yourself watching a TV show and laughing at something and thinking, “That’s really weird – I’ve just laughed at a joke even though I’m really miserable.” But your functions still function, and it must take time to come to terms with that.
Because my dad died, you start to get a handle on death, the inevitability of it, how small we all are, how fragile we all are, how vulnerable we all are. I look at my kids and I think some of this stuff like A levels doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. >>
Life has to carry on, especially for your children. I can be having the worst day ever, then my children will walk through the door and I have to put a brave face on, and when you do that, you do generally feel a lot better.
We are like a family on Cold Feet, and I have enormous respect for everyone, particularly for Hermione Norris. There’s an important element to our friendship because the women need to stick together, like you have to hold each other’s hand to get your point across or make sure women are represented, because it can get quite “boy-ey” when it’s a male writer. We’re always nagging, “Wait a minute, another pub scene? I don’t think so.” Whenever there’s a boy pub scene, we’re like, “Where are the girls? What do we think?” My first day on Cold Feet was so long ago, but what I do remember is a make-up artist wouldn’t let me have mascara, and so another make-up artist snuck me some! I think the make-up artist thought I was too vain. I’m not asking for surgery, for God’s sake. She obviously didn’t like me. Some people don’t, I don’t know why.
I was terrified when Cold Feet returned. I almost made myself ill worrying. In the cab, on the way to the first day back – I don’t have a faith as such, apart from worshipping at the altar of food – but I started praying. I was, “I don’t know who I’m praying to but I want to have an accident, not a bad one, just something to make me not have to go.” It was awful, but the minute I saw my old pals, everything was fine, we actually had a laugh and it was all good.
The days filming I most enjoy are the ones where it says on the top of the script, “Pete and Jenny, sex scene”, because I know we’re in for a right laugh. John [Thomson] and I did a scene at the fridge in the last series, it was a fantasy sequence. We had the best two hours messing about with eggs and who knows what else, me in a nightie. It was so funny and that’s always fun. But mainly, the best bit about working is going home. That’s the bit I like. I enjoy my work but
I really, really enjoy my life. I will always sacrifice work over life, it’s the way I am.
My daughter Parker wants to go into acting but I’m not letting her yet.
“I was terrified when Cold Feet returned. I almost made myself ill worrying. But the minute I saw my old pals, everything was fine”
There’s a rule, and the rule is, “Bad luck, you’ve got to be in school until you’re
16!” She’s just turned
16, so now I’m in trouble.
I’m very worried about her following in my footsteps, I’m hedging my bets with her a bit. Whenever we’re in the adult world, I point out other jobs. I go, “Ooh, that’s very interesting, isn’t it? And guess what, if you do that job, they won’t care if you’re not on a diet, if you don’t have loads of plastic surgery, and you won’t be rejected three times a week!” So I’m very aware of the pitfalls for my beautiful, naive, gorgeous daughter. She has no idea because, unfortunately, whenever
I say, “Look, it’s not easy,” she’ll always go, “You’ve done all right,” and to be fair I was working in Coco’s in Temple Fortune at her age, folding sweaty towels and cleaning sunbeds.
I don’t look young, I look my age. I’ve put on weight and I can’t watch myself on telly for that reason, it’s really hard. People say to me, “Oh, but you’re really real,” and I hate being real. It’s rubbish being the real one. I don’t want to be real, I want to be Amanda Holden!
But something is stopping me doing anything about it. I don’t do anything. I’m really rubbish. Every morning I think, “Well, I’ve got the full outfit for jogging, I could put it on,” but I don’t.
There’s one thing I’ve done all my life to make myself feel better, whatever my financial situation, and I tell all my girlfriends to do the same. I say, “Don’t worry about the face, don’t worry about your weight going up and down, get a blow-dry.” It’s all about the hair. Minimum, once a week, a nice lady comes to my house and does me a nice blow-dry.
My wedding day was the best day of my life. I’ve got a couple of others that rival it. I mean, obviously the birth of my two kids, but that did involve a lot of pain, so I’ve got to weigh that up. The wedding day was like a preamble to my children. Dan [pictured with Fay] and I had a really amazing wedding in Tuscany, where his parents lived at the time, and what I wouldn’t do to get into my wedding dress and have that day again. I would change the guest list up a bit because it was really tiny but I think everyone thinks like that, like “Why did I invite them?” I only had 40 people, but it was so gorgeous in every way.
I also beat Gordon Ramsay 4-1 in a cooking competition when we made brownies on a show, and he had 16 Michelin stars at the time, so that sort of might outweigh the wedding day.
I do still have my wedding dress but I made a terrible mistake. I cut my wedding dress off at the knee. It was such an exquisite dress and
“I beat Gordon Ramsay 4-1 in a TV cooking competition!”
I thought I would then wear it as a summer dress, but then of course it looked like a wedding dress cut off at the bloody knee! I’ve never worn it as a result because I’ve ruined it. I’ve self-harmed basically. It’s really sad. I can’t even get it out of its casing to look at it because of what I did to it. It was a massive error.
I am quite smug about our marriage though because I think, through pure luck, I’ve found a prince from Australia, and the fact he was Australian and didn’t live here or anything, and now he does and we have our life here, and we’re really happy. I do wake up in the morning and think, “Oh my God, that all worked out great!” so I’m very grateful. I don’t have a secret to a happy relationship or I’d have written a book on it. But in my own case, looking back, we’ve been married for 17 years and been together about 20. We had children quite soon, and we parent from the same page. A lot of people I know haven’t managed to do that because they’ve thought different things and there’s a lot of anxiety and arguments when it comes to dealing with your children. But we basically tend to agree about the kids and then once you’ve done that, it’s that old thing of you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child.
I do the cooking. My husband tried for a while. He’s a really good cook, he’s half-Italian, but I just get so irritated by his methods and his not cleaning up, all those stereotypes. That’s probably the only time we argue, when he tries to cook. I feel bad because he has lost his confidence.
When Dan was in The Durrells, some of the mums at school were quite pleased with that, and I didn’t pay for a blow-dry for 20 years because I’d slip into conversation that my husband was the swimmer in Muriel’s Wedding and no charge. Once in a while, the parents get star-struck, but on the school run people get bored pretty quickly. Also, at my son’s school, they have much, much more famous people like Gwyneth Paltrow and
Chris Martin there, so I’m like, “Hi,
I’m actually on the TV, don’t know if you’ve seen my show!”
Cold Feet is on ITV at 9pm on Mondays w&h