Suranne Jones is back on BBC One tonight as DCI Amy Silva in the third Vigil adventure, but the actress's life away from the camera is far less dramatic than her on-screen counterpart's. The 48-year-old, who shot to fame in Coronation Street as Karen MacDonald, has an award-winning career that includes a string of hit shows, with Vigil among them.
In the new series, set on a remote Arctic research station, she reprises her role as Amy Silva, teaming up with Rose Leslie's DI Kirsten Longacre to tackle dangerous investigations. Off-screen, Jones spends her time with family and champions other actresses through her own production company.
Family life and how she met her husband
Jones has a 10-year-old son with her husband of four years, magazine editor and scriptwriter Laurence Akers. The couple met in 2013 at the wedding of her close friend and Coronation Street co-star Sally Lindsay, and married the following year in Islington. They now live in North London.
Speaking to the Mirror, Jones revealed that Laurence was initially set up with Countdown's Carol Vorderman. She recalled: "He said, 'I do have a friend, he's over there', Laurence was sitting next to Carol Vorderman." Laurence added: "My mates were trying to pair me off with Carol Vorderman."
Jones continued: "Later I was dancing with the actor Peter Eccleston, the partner of Antony Cotton from Coronation Street. Laurence came over and said, 'Can I cut in?' But he took Peter instead of me and was flinging him around the dance floor. I thought, 'Oh, he's very funny'. We swapped numbers." Two years later, in 2015, the couple married in a private ceremony at Islington Town Hall.
Losing her parents
When Jones gave birth to her son in 2016, she lost her mother Jenny following a battle with dementia. She credits her mum with inspiring her acting career, telling the Mirror: "There are different icons [in my life]. I had a lot of women in my family, my mum and her sisters, who were always very strong women in different ways, good Northern women."
She added: "My mum was very shy but with a real strength of character underneath, which I'm hoping to share with my son... She's not with us anymore, but I think of her often. I had a really good relationship with my mother." In an interview with the Guardian, she spoke about having to 'rewire' her relationship with her mum as she stopped recognising her: "There's still a connection, only it's very different. And meanwhile your whole being is saying: but this is my mum. There was a good five years of that. And then you lose them for real and you have to grieve again."
Five years later, her father died from Covid, and she grieved him in secret. In an Instagram tribute, she wrote: "Happy birthday mum forever on a beach in Cornwall with dad mum passed away 4 and a half years ago and my father sadly passed away this January after fighting Covid and the affect it had on his body. We are still coming to terms with it all but I know they are together and today I want to celebrate them both."
Phobia and production company
Jones has revealed she has carpophobia, a fear of wrists, which she believes stems from her Catholic upbringing. She said: "I hate wrists. Growing up as a Catholic girl, seeing Jesus on the cross with the stigmata has made me not like wrists. You can see people's veins."
In 2017, Jones and her husband set up their own production company, Teamakers Productions Ltd. The BAFTA-winning actress said she enjoys creating roles for women often overlooked in life. Praising Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You, she said: "I know I want to work with daring people and I want to push things... I May Destroy You is amazing and the half-hours are becoming really popular because they're stories that are just crammed at you and you can binge them if you want to. Things are really changing and it's exciting."
She added: "I love producing. I think it's something I love almost better than acting at times because it's finding out what's next and being in the driving seat, in a way, of how can we get to what we want." Vigil airs on BBC One tonight at 9pm.
