21 February 2024 , 20:00
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Men Behaving Badly star Caroline Quentin has been questioning her own behaviour about working too much while her children were growing up.
The actress, 63, became a household name playing the highly capable, long-suffering Dorothy in the hit 90s sitcom. And she had to cope with more domestic strife in the noughties, as a DCI in Blue Murder and a single parent in Life Begins. Now she wishes she had struck a better work/life balance at home and said “no” to work while her two children Emily Rose, 24, and William, 20, were younger.
She tells Good Housekeeping: “God, I missed them. I mourned them terribly when I was away. That’s probably why I feel so bad about it because it left a hole in me. People said: ‘Oh, they’re young for such a short period of time’, and I didn’t listen; I thought I knew better, and I didn’t.
“I should’ve said no to work and yes to them, but because I was the breadwinner, I thought I had to do it. Well, I didn’t, did I? But you can’t turn back the clock; you have to live with these things.” In the 90s, Quentin was married to comedian Paul Merton. She wed Sam Farmer in 2006. Quentin also discussed discovering new inspiration in her 60s, taking charge of her mental well-being, and the solace she finds in gardening.
She wishes she had a better 'work/life balance' when her children were younger
She became a household name playing Dorothy in the hit 90s sitcomShe says of her love for gardening: “Ever since I was little, it’s been a sort of security blanket. My childhood was quite chaotic; my mother, who had bipolar disorder, would often spend time in psychiatric hospitals. When I was 10, I was sent to boarding school, with these horrible, grumpy matrons and regimented bath and mealtimes.
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“I was a painfully shy child, I still am shy beneath my loud persona, and I remember being so homesick and discombobulated by everything in my life. But getting out in nature and watching things grow felt like time out from the ‘real’ world. It was an opportunity to leave all the sadness and scary things behind.”
The 2020 Strictly Come Dancing star, who has coeliac disease, recently released her book, Drawn To The Garden, and said it was “wonderful” to suddenly do something different in her 60s.
*The full interview is in the April issue of Good Housekeeping, which is on sale now.