‘The Secret To A Happy Marriage? Laughter!'

Actor Helen McCrory shares her thoughts about love at first sight with husband Damian Lewis

- Hayley Minn

We’re delighted to see Helen McCrory back on our screens again. Last seen as Polly Gray, domineering matriarch of the Shelby family in BBC drama Peaky Blinders, she claims her ongoing success is down to her ‘searing lack of ambition’.

Now Helen, 51, is to star as Major Charles Ingram’s defence lawyer, Sonia Woodley QC, in ITV’s Quiz – a three-part drama about the infamous Who Wants to be a Millionaire? coughing cheating scandal.

While many of us in 2001 were gripped by the real-life drama surrounding the major and his wife Diana, who allegedly cheated their way to winning £1 million on Chris Tarrant’s TV show, Helen confesses she ‘didn’t really have many memories of the drama at all’.

She goes on to reveal why. ‘The Twin Towers terror attack happened the day after this scandal, so that overshadowed it for me at the time,’ she says. ‘My family were in the Foreign Office and my uncle was in New York, so we were much more involved in their welfare.’