They should make a drama out of my life! Ruthie Henshall on surviving divorce, her sister’s suicide and abuse as a child

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    Richard Barber
    Last updated at 11:04 PM on 3rd March 2011

    Ruthie Henshall returns her cup of cappuccino to its saucer and looks me straight in the eye.

    ‘The past three years have been testing,’ she says, ‘but I’m starting to feel peaceful. I don’t want to sound like Pollyanna, but I feel blessed that everything is now calm.’

    This newfound contentment represents something of a sea-change in her approach to how she runs her life.

    Testing times: Whether they invite it or not, there are some people who seem to attract unexpected drama. Ruthie Henshall is one of those people

    Testing times: Whether they invite it or not, there are some people who seem to attract unexpected drama. Ruthie Henshall is one of those people

    ‘I’d always been a person who had goals. Not now. Now I’m content to live one day at a time. Anyway, you know what they say: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.’

    Whether they invite it or not, there are some people who seem to attract unexpected drama. Ruthie Henshall is one of those people.

    So the Almighty must have been chuckling on and off throughout Ruthie’s life as she shared her goals with him, even if much of what has happened to her — in her private life, at least — has been far from funny.

    She will be 44 on Monday, and on Wednesday opened in a new West End production of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit opposite Alison Steadman, Hermione Norris and Robert Bathurst.

    After 25 years as one of our most bankable musical theatre stars, this represents something of a departure from her comfort zone.

    ‘It’s so different from what I’m used to,’ she says. ‘There are only seven of us in the cast and I’m used to a large company. I kept waiting for more people to turn up. It wasn’t remotely showbiz. I showed up on the first day, all t*ts and teeth, to be met — quite properly — by a reverential atmosphere.

    ‘I’d just seen a TV documentary about Alison Steadman and her huge body of work. I could barely look her in the eye at rehearsals. I kept wanting to genuflect. I realise now how nervous I was. I spent the first couple of weeks cracking jokes, never quite being able to relax. But then I often do that. I use humour as a shield.’

    It’s a habit that goes back to her childhood. Her parents, David and Gloria, have always had a passionate, not to say volatile marriage. Ruthie, the youngest of four girls, would strain every sinew, she says now, to be a people-pleaser.

    ‘I wanted everything to be nice. I wanted my parents to stay together. It’s no mystery why I became a dancer and singer. I was performing long before I became a performer.’ She was four-and-a-half when a close and trusted family friend sexually abused her. To this day, she prefers not to say what happened. 

    At ease: Ruthie and fellow Dancing on Ice judges Lilly Allen and Jason Gardiner. This newfound contentment represents something of a sea-change in her approach to how she runs her life

    At ease: Ruthie and fellow Dancing on Ice judges Lilly Allen and Jason Gardiner. This newfound contentment represents something of a sea-change in her approach to how she runs her life

    ‘But it was serious,’ she says, ‘and he frightened me as much by what he said afterwards as by what he’d done. I don’t remember the words he used. But I can clearly recall his finger wagging in my face and the threat of what would happen if I told anyone “our” secret. I was very, very scared, properly afraid.’

    The same man repeated the abuse when Ruthie was eight and nine. ‘And I never breathed a word to anyone.’

    Ruthie first made her name, aged 19, in Cats. It’s where she met Prince Edward, then working for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group. ‘Edward would come to the theatre and I was totally unfazed about chatting to him — the arrogance of youth, I suppose.’

    They dated for five years, on and off, ‘two of them solid’ she says.She was a regular visitor to Buckingham Palace, often dining with her boyfriend’s parents. ‘It was a bit nerve-racking at first, but the Queen and Prince Philip are used to putting people at their ease.’

    The relationship ran its course and she has not one bad word to say about her Prince. ‘I was even invited to his wedding to Sophie; the two of them are so beautifully matched.’

    As her professional reputation flourished with leading roles in musicals such as Crazy For You, Oliver! and Chicago, so, perversely, did her long-suppressed childhood rage which surfaced as recurring depression. By 1994, she was engaged to John Gordon Sinclair, famous from the film Gregory’s Girl, and appearing with him in the musical She Loves Me.

    ‘I’d be fine on stage, hiding behind the mask of the role I was playing. Then I’d go out after the show and lie in bed the following morning until midday. I was putting my life on hold. I never stopped long enough to confront my underlying depression. And I was using alcohol to numb my emotions.’

    Eventually, she revealed her dark childhood secret to her sister, Abi, a psychotherapist. She was the first person to make Ruthie realise how much anger she’d bottled up inside.

    Abi recommended a therapist. ‘Although he convinced me I had every justification for my anger, I think I was looking for a quick fix and, when it didn’t happen, I stopped seeing him.’

    Treading the boards: Ruthie became an overnight sensation as Roxie Hart in the hit musical Chicago

    Treading the boards: Ruthie became an overnight sensation as Roxie Hart in the hit musical Chicago

    While on Broadway playing Roxie Hart in Chicago, she consulted two other therapists. ‘For whatever reason, neither was scratching the itch. Therapies and therapists are so particular, so personalised. One size doesn’t fit all.’

    On impulse one day, Ruthie rang up a woman – a social worker she’d met just once through a friend – to ask for help. ‘I found it much easier talking to this virtual stranger about what I was going through than to anyone close to me.’

    When she’d finished pouring out her woes, Ruthie was asked by the woman if she’d ever heard of the Hoffman Process, an amalgamation of strands from different therapies with an emphasis on taking the participant back to unresolved childhood issues which need sorting before you can move forward again.

    She attended an eight-day residential course in California, ‘chosen because nobody knew me there and I was fearful of what I was letting myself in for’. Physical work included beating a cushion with a baseball bat.

    ‘I ended up with blisters on my hands, so there was a lot of anger wanting to come out.’

    Ruthie was encouraged to write down her thoughts without taking the pen off the page until she’d run out of things to say. ‘Then you had to throw all the paper in the bin, a way of releasing your problems.’

    By the end of the course, she remembers feeling as if she were floating on air. ‘It was like I’d been injected with a drug that was going to allow me to cope. I was left with the tools for whenever I needed help through a demanding time.’

    Sadly, in August 2007, those tools were needed as never before. Another sister, Noel, had emerged from a difficult relationship. Unable to cope, she ended her life with an overdose.

    ‘I’m never going to get over it,’ says Ruthie, ‘none of us are. And we’re never going to stop missing her. If I’m honest, I also felt anger towards Noel. I’d got my life back on track and now this. I know that will sound selfish, but I couldn’t help it.’

    In 2001, she had starred in the West End musical Peggy Sue Got Married. Her leading man was Canadian singer/actor Tim Howar, 41. ‘As soon as he walked into rehearsals, I thought: “Who’s that?” He was very loud, so full of life and very, very funny.’

    What lies beneath: Eventually, she revealed her dark childhood secret to her sister, Abi, a psychotherapist. She was the first person to make Ruthie realise how much anger she'd bottled up inside

    What lies beneath: Eventually, she revealed her dark childhood secret to her sister, Abi, a psychotherapist. She was the first person to make Ruthie realise how much anger she’d bottled up inside

    Six weeks later, Ruthie turned to him one day and blurted out: ‘You’re going to be the father of my children.’

    ‘I don’t know what came over me. Mind you, he didn’t turn a hair.’

    The couple married in 2004, a year after Lily, now eight, was born. Dolly, six, appeared two years later. But in 2009 the marriage began to unravel. She is reluctant to discuss the details but, when pushed, lays some of the blame at the door of their conflicting work schedules.

    ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder, yes, but only for a short amount of time. Quite soon, it can be more a case of out of sight, out of mind.’

    They’ve been apart for 18 months, their divorce not yet finalised. ‘When we separated, I went through the different stages of anger, bitterness, upset, what you might call the arc of grief.

    ‘No one goes into a marriage thinking it might last only a few years. I meant my vows when I took them. I looked at my parents — 57 years together and still counting — and that’s what I wanted for me, what I thought I’d have.’

    She’s close to her father. ‘Well, I’ll always be his baby.’

    When something upset her recently, ‘He put his arms around me and said: “There’s nothing we can’t sort out together.” I’m a woman of 43, but I completely trust that everything’s going to be all right when he tells me something like that. He’s been the only man in a household of five women. And we’re all barking.’

    She laughs, adding: ‘Tim and I have wrestled ourselves into as good a place as it can be, although I don’t mind admitting it’s still a work in progress.

    ‘But we can be civil now. We can hug each other. A lot of the kindness is coming back into our relationship. It’s what I want our children to see.’

    And yet… ‘Just when I thought we were through the forest, one of the girls asked me the other day why Daddy couldn’t come and live with us again. I repeated what we said when Tim and I broke up: “Mummy and Daddy aren’t best friends any more and you have to be best friends to be married.” Tim now lives in London and has a girlfriend.

    ‘I’ve always asked him not to introduce anyone to our daughters until he and she are serious about each other. So far, that hasn’t happened. Anyway, he’s about to go on tour with Mike & The Mechanics as one of their lead singers.

    ‘The trouble is, Lily and Dolly have gypsies for parents. I’m doing six evenings a week in Blithe Spirit and two matinees.

    Because their parents’ professional lives are so unpredictable, I want to keep the girls’ home life as stable as possible.

    And no, she can’t  imagine finding a new partner. ‘How could a significant man fit into my life? Who could be good enough to introduce to the girls? They’ve gone through enough with my separation from their father.’

    It knocked Ruthie sideways, too, making her take a long, cool look at her life. ‘My big new word is “pause”. I’ve always had a habit of charging at things head first.

    ‘But I’ve learnt I need to pause and think and figure out whatever it is before moving forward. I even started buying books about dealing with divorce and its effect on children. And I talk to other people — friends I trust implicitly — who may have some useful advice.’ 

    New horizons: Ruthie is starring in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. After 25 years as one of our most bankable musical theatre stars, this represents something of a departure from her comfort zone

    New horizons: Ruthie is starring in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. After 25 years as one of our most bankable musical theatre stars, this represents something of a departure from her comfort zone

    She refuses to feel sorry for herself. ‘Nobody coasts through life,’ she says. ‘Yes, there have been times when I’ve tucked into a tub of Haagen-Dazs and had a good blub, but it passes, not least because life — especially with children — propels you forward.’

    She may be a West End star, but it’s likely many will know Ruthie from her stint as a judge on Dancing On Ice in 2008 and 2009.

    ‘I was asked if I was interested in being a contestant in the first series, but I’d turned it down. I didn’t think it would catch on.’

    How wrong she was. ‘On my  first appearance, I was seen by  ten million viewers — that’s more people than have seen me in my entire stage career.’

    Now she’s back on stage, but she’s also writing a book aimed at people wanting to get into musical theatre. She’s also recording two albums, a celebration of her quarter-century in the business and another of lullabies. ‘I couldn’t find any good CDs to play to my children in the car or when I was putting them to bed.’

    She performed six concerts last year, rather nervously, she says. ‘I didn’t know if I’d sell enough tickets. People would come to see me in Chicago, but did I exist outside the brand? Did they want to see Roxie or Ruthie?’ She needn’t have worried. Now, she’s planning an extensive tour for the second half of this year.

    It’s why she can say she’s reached a calmer place in her life. ‘I concentrate on the here and now. There’s a saying I like: “Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery. But today’s a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.”

    ‘Corny, I know,’ she says, pulling a face. ‘But that doesn’t stop it being true.’

    • Blithe Spirit is at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue until June 18. Box office: 0844 412 4658.

     

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    They should make a drama out of my life! Ruthie Henshall on surviving divorce, her sister’s suicide and abuse as a child