Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville has admitted he “feels blessed” to have “started a new chapter” by finding love again after his divorce from wife Lucinda Williams following 25 years of marriage.
Hugh Bonneville “feels blessed” to have “started a new chapter” by finding love again after his divorce.
The Downton Abbey star, 62, split from his wife Lucinda Williams – the mother of his 22-year-old son Felix – in 2023 after 25 years of marriage and he recently went public with his new partner, Heidi Kadlecova, 54, who made her red carpet debut with the actor by accompanying him to the premiere of his latest film Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale in September.
He has now admitted he feels lucky to have been able to move on. When asked if he has found “late-flowering love”, he told Saga magazine: “I have.
“I want to be sensitive about what I say, because there is still a lot of rawness. But I do feel very blessed and very content to have started a new chapter.”
Bonneville has endured a tough few years after losing his mother Patricia in 2014, his brother Nigel, who died in his sleep two years later, and his father John, who died in 2020.
The actor admits the grief of losing three family members in eight years has been difficult but it’s made him appreciate his own life in a new way.
He told the publication: “‘I am more accepting of the wheel of life and how fortunate I have been to have, on the whole, good health and to do something I love … In terms of my outlook on life, having lost three significant members of my family, it’s made me more fatalistic.”
Bonneville previously explained he was forced him to confront his own mortality following the death of his sibling Nigel Bonneville in 2017 so he decided to embrace life by buying the car he’d always dreamed of owning.
He told The Independent newspaper: “My brother died suddenly in his sleep and so the next day, I went and bought the soft top convertible I’d always wanted.
“I planted the copper beech tree I’d been meaning to plant for 20 years. Because it made me realise just how utterly … what’s the word, roulette?
“How much of a roulette life is.”
Bonneville sold the car a year later, but he continued with his campaign to make every moment “count”.
He added: “That instinct had kicked in … Try and make it count, try and make it matter, try and do it now … I’ve got friends who’ve died and you think, we’re only here once.
“We’re not learning from the past about how we treat each other. Those tragedies rhyme throughout history. What can we do to make our final chapters positive in some way? …
“Just to try to make things a little kinder, a little calmer, a little more generous – so that the next generation isn’t full of despair.”
Hugh Bonneville ‘feels blessed’ with ‘new chapter’ after divorce
