Bridget Jones star Sally Phillips revealed last year she had found love again after her husband left her for a yoga teacher.
The actress, who played Shazza in all three of the Bridget Jones movies, was married to shipping director Andrew Bermejo for 14 years and the couple share three sons, Oliver, Tom and Luke. But the couple split in 2017 after Andrew left her for a yoga teacher. Although usually tight-lipped about her private life, Sally shared she has been in a new relationship for the past four years after being introduced to her new man by a friend.
Describing her new partner Ian as “to die for” last summer, the 53-year-old told Kaye Adams at How To Be 60 Live!: “My husband left me for a member of the Russian Yoga Federation, though I’m not legally allowed to say that anymore, but he won’t listen to this.” Opening up on her new romance for the first time, Sally continued: “Fortunately my friend introduced me to Ian, and I’ve been with Ian for four years now. And he’s to die for. I’m going to overshare because comedians do that.
“But when he kissed me, I did think of that line; you need to be kissed a lot by someone who knows how. So I’ve met someone who knows how to kiss. I am very, very happy with him and I feel very lucky to have had a second chance.”
However, Sally says there is “always that pain for the kids”, adding: “Because my kids were quite young when it happened. And I guess I would never have left. But now he’s [ex Andrew] has taken all the guilt from me and done it for me, I’m quite pleased.”
The star, who shot to fame in Channel 4 sketch show Smack The Pony and also played irritating posh Tilly in the BBC’s Miranda, married Andrew in 2003 but has since said cracks started to appear in the relationship when she gave birth to eldest son Olly, who was diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome.
Going through the pain of several miscarriages also added to the “divide” between her and Andrew as the years went on. Speaking in 2018, Sally shared: “We’d had a divide that started after Olly in that my husband and I dealt with the diagnosis in very different ways.
“Then this division over babies got wider, because he hadn’t really taken onboard I was pregnant. Fourteen weeks [when she lost one of her babies] isn’t that long, but in your body you’re feeling the sickness, the excitement and all these things.”
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