Joanna Page has opened up about the private turmoil she was going through at the very moment her professional life was soaring thanks to Gavin & Stacey.
The Welsh actress, 47, became a household name playing bubbly Stacey Shipman opposite Mathew Horne in the beloved BBC sitcom, but while the show was at its peak, she was quietly struggling at home.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Page revealed that her marriage to actor James Thornton was under strain as they tried to balance work and distance. Thornton, best known for his role in Emmerdale, was based in Leeds from 2009, while Page remained in London.
“He went off to do Emmerdale for three years. When a job comes in, your first thought is that you’ve got to take it — that’s the life of an actor,” she explained. “But suddenly we went from being so close and together all the time to him living up in Leeds and me in London.”
She continued: “To the outside world, it looked like life was wonderful — we were winning awards, doing red carpets, and everything was so exciting. But inside, my heart was just breaking. I’d go home, sit with my dog Daisy, and I didn’t want to go out or do anything. I was really miserable and down.”
Thankfully, the couple found their way back to happiness after Thornton left the soap, and the pair have now been married for over two decades.
They share four children — Eva, 12, Kit, 10, Noah, eight, and Boe, three — along with a busy household that also includes four guinea pigs and two dogs.
That bustling family life, Page admits, is one reason she has no immediate plans to return to the stage. Instead, she is focusing on presenting and podcasting, saying she feels more comfortable “being herself” rather than playing a character.
In her new memoir Lush, she writes: “The whole entertainment world is so different from when I first came out of RADA. I can act, present, or pod — it’s exciting. But right now, I don’t fancy leaving the kids and going away to a film set for weeks on end. Maybe when they’re older, I’ll think, you know what, I fancy doing a play again. But for now, I just want to be me.”
