They’ve been together for four decades - but were forced to spend chunks of lockdown apart due to Brenda Blethyn’s filming schedule.
So, how did her husband Michael find it? “Lovely,” she quips.
“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder - well, it’s true,” the Vera star insists. “Being apart seems to keep us together.”
Brenda spent lockdown filming the 11th series of the ITV drama, which will start airing later this year.
“It’s been lovely... so he says!” the actress jokes. “No, we get on fine.
“When I’m up in Newcastle filming Vera, I don’t see him for months on end. We talk a couple of times a day, it might just be: ‘Hello, how are you doing?’ but we make sure it always happens and it just works.”
The couple wed in 2010 following a 35 year long engagement.
Brenda, 75, says she “fully expects” to be working until the end of her life.
She tells Good Housekeeping: “My parents worked until their dying days, and I fully expect to be doing the same.
“Mum had about six jobs to put food on the table and dad spent the latter part of his life working in a ladies’ dress shop as a handyman.
“They instilled that work ethic in me; if you want to earn some money, you’ve got to work for it.
“I enjoy being busy, too, so I’ll always find something to do, even if it’s painting a wall.”
Speaking about turning 75, she says: “If I’m completely honest, I don’t feel the slightest bit different!
“You’re only as old as you feel, and I certainly don’t feel 75. That’s just a number, isn’t it?”
*Read the full interview with Brenda in the May issue of Good Housekeeping on sale April 7.
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