The kissing scene? That’s very rude! Come on, I’m British! We do not rate men’s kisses. All I’m going to say is his wife is a very lucky lady.
He’s very lovely. You know Matthew Macfadyen, I think he’s the perfect Darcy. He’s a proper bloke and he’s very vulnerable at the same time, and it’s such a romantic combination. He’s a lovely, lovely guy, his wife is a very lucky lady.
Keira Knightley
Matthew and Keeley have become two of my best friends in the world. The love that was already between us grew stronger because we had to protect each other over that time.
David Oyelowo
It was an awful situation because I realised I’d fallen for her. When you’re confronted with something like that, what can you do? We weren’t having an affair and it was a slow process. But I knew the effect she had on me.
She’s gorgeous. Everyone who meets her will tell you the same thing.
High point Meeting my scrumptious wife on Spooks.
Was their falling in love romantic? ‘It was. But difficult.’ What attracted him? ‘I don’t know. I just thought, “Oh, God! Here we go!” Just that feeling! She’s lovely and funny and all the rest. But I just thought, “Phwoar! Fancy you!”‘ Did he fall in love easily? ‘Yes. I like being in love, if you know what I mean. More than not.’ But he didn’t expect it to happen in those circumstances? ‘No. No!’ I tell him Keeley had said recently that he wasn’t very romantic, and he gives a great bark of laughter. ‘Did she? Because my vanity is I’m terribly romantic!’ He grins. ‘But being married is lovely. Keeley’s been in Jersey recently doing a Thomas Hardy. So I’ve been going back and forth with the little ones.’
Their daughter Maggie is two. ‘She’s bliss,’ her father says with delight. Macfadyen and Hawes and the children live near Twickenham and he would love to have more, he admits. He says he is much happier ‘cooking and faffing round’ at home than going out. When I ask him to describe his perfect day he paints a domestic picture: ‘Wake up, have a bowl of porridge, play with the kids. I would surprise Keeley and take her somewhere, very quickly.’ If you hadn’t seen him perform, it would be hard to believe there was much going on in there at all from his tentative manner and sweet-natured smile.
Matthew Macfadyen
Chrissie recalls that at the height of the waif thing, the work “started to drop off” for another of Select’s high profile signings Keeley Hawes. “Now Keeley has a great pair of boobs,” explains Chrissie, recounting how she took a slightly despondent big-chested Keeley out to lunch to tell her to cheer up and go back to acting while the waif thing blew over.
Select Model’s Chrissie Castagnetti on the waif trend
I think some of the criticism that Keeley has got from some of the press has been disgraceful, quite frankly.
I think they’ve been completely misogynistic about it and they should hang their heads in shame. And they’re just wrong.
I think a lot of people somehow thought that Life on Mars was some kind of a bloke’s show.
It’s a hellishly difficult thing to come into and I’ve seen how hard she works and how brilliant she is. To all those detractors, they’re just plain wrong.
Philip Glenister
In fact, we make things a lot sexier than the real job actually is. When we first started you know, MI5 got a massive increase in applications. I think that was because people thought they were going to get to work with Keeley Hawes. There aren’t many Keeleys to go around.
Peter Firth
He came off Spooks to make In My Father’s Den in the summer of 2003, just when press coverage of his relationship with Hawes was beginning to die down. The experience seemed to re-energise him. The shoot in New Zealand was sufficiently remote for him to kick off the photographers (“though I did miss my girly”) outside his Twickenham home.
Matthew Macfadyen
She told me she got stung by a bee and had to sit in a bath of camomile. I went to deliver a line and just fluffed it. I was just thinking about Keeley in the bath.
Marshall Lancaster
MacFadyen is best known here for the British police series “MI-5“. It was not only a key to launching an international career, it changed his life; he married his co-star, Keeley Hawes. They have an 11-month-old daughter.
“Yeah, we met at work,” he said. And no, it was hardly love at first sight. “It was a slow burn,” he said, then laughed.
Macfadyen’s domestic situation can’t be compared to the lovely scenario presented by “Pride & Prejudice“, in which Darcy’s millions dissolve all Elizabeth’s financial worries.
Hawes has “been subsidizing me for the last year,” he said. “She had the baby as well, she’s done three jobs since I’ve made this film.”
After seeing him as Darcy, audiences will consider Macfadyen a romantic. Is he truly?
“My vanity is that I’m quite romantic, that I’m very romantic,” he said, then laughed. “But my wife doesn’t think so. She says, ‘You’re not romantic at all.’ I could do better.”
Matthew Macfadyen
That’s bollocks. We’re just two actors. We’re not the first couple of anything. I don’t like being thought of as part of a celebrity couple.
Matthew Macfadyen, on their status as “the first couple of British drama”
In her charmed working life since leaving drama school (her four best female friends have not had the same luck but remain ‘fantastically supportive’ of her success), she has been privileged to work with some amazing actors. Tom Courtenay is a particular favourite, as are Matthew Macfadyen and his wife Keeley Hawes (‘the best couple ever’), and she has huge admiration for their refusal to become ‘celebrities’. Her future career, she hopes, will be like theirs — with an emphasis on the work not the fame.
Claire Foy shares Matthew’s view
The real job is, of course, not nearly as exciting as the fictional one depicted in Spooks.
“We practically save the world every week and I’m sure we’re wearing much nicer clothes than the real people at MI5 are wearing,” laughs Macfadyen.
Ironically, filming the show isn’t as exciting as it looks – the hours are long and tedious.
However, one nice thing for Macfadyen about Spooks is that he met his girlfriend, Keeley Hawes, on the set.
She was last seen here in Tipping the Velvet – “that disgusting, revolting, evil lesbian romp,” he jokes.
Hawes plays fellow agent Zoe Reynolds, who dons nearly as many wigs as Jennifer Garner in Alias to go undercover.
Matthew Macfadyen, on Spooks and Tipping the Velvet
My TV crush is… Nigella Lawson. When she’s licking her fingers in her dressing gown, I can’t turn it off. And Keeley Hawes in Ashes to Ashes, because the 1980s was the time when I was first discovering girls and she epitomises that.
Richard Armitage, Red Magazine February 2009
Holly has been working solidly in the past year, filming Material Girl for the BBC and Identity for ITV1. ‘It’s about identity fraud, which is obviously a very serious subject, but I love my character, she’s a bit wild and energetic and funny and brings a lot of humour to the show. And it’s been fantastic to work with Keeley Hawes and Aiden Gillen.’
Holly Aird
Tennant has recently finished filming a leading role in RSC director Deborah Warner’s first film, The Last September, in a cast which also features Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Keeley Hawes and Jane Birkin.
‘It’s based on a novel by Elizabeth Bowen and set in Ireland in 1920. It’s shades of Merchant-Ivory but I think a bit grittier than that.
‘I play a British army officer who’s there helping to protect a big house owned by an Anglo-Irish family; I fall in love with the daughter of the house, Keeley Hawes, and she sort of falls in love with me, but can’t make up her mind between me and the IRA man hiding in the woods.
‘So you have the political side of it, which is fascinating — I knew very little about it.’
David Tennant
I was drawn to the subject matter, and I liked the fact that it was a true story. Autism is a subject not often addressed in drama and it is an ‘authentic script’. It’s not too sentimental or melodramatic, which is what interested me. I was also drawn to the fact that Keeley (Hawes) was playing Nicola. I knew Nicola would be in safe hands.
Ben Miles on what drew him to After Thomas