Vicky McClure has revealed she told her husband Jonny Owen some "heartbreaking" news before coming to a major realisation. The 43-year-old actress, currently starring in Trigger Point, reflected on the experience while making a guest appearance on Saturday Kitchen this morning (September 26).
McClure has been thinking about In Our Dementia Choir, a 2018 TV show in which she explored music's power in combatting dementia. For the programme, she formed a choir of people living with dementia in her hometown of Nottingham to see whether music could make a measurable difference in their lives.
News of a choir member's death
This year, while on holiday with her Welsh-born director husband Jonny Owen, she learned that another member of the choir had passed away. She said: "That is a regular occurrence because that is the nature of dementia.
"It's the UK's biggest killer. Worldwide everybody's facing it and it's heartbreaking, but it does make me feel like I should grab life."
McClure added: "I think we all have that sense – whenever somebody around you becomes ill or you know, you become ill yourself or you just realise just how fragile life is and just how grateful we should always try to be."
Living in the moment
The actress said she believes we should always try to live in the moment: "You don't need to be a guru. You don't need to sit and bathe in a forest or do all these things to feel that you can do that wherever you are right now, wherever you live in the world. We can all just try and remind ourselves, I suppose, when you come somewhere like this it's like the humongous sense of gratitude."
McClure got her big break in the Shane Meadows series This is England, a working-class story that allowed her to play a character close to her authentic self. She says that even in the 21st century there still aren't enough opportunities for working-class actors.
Working-class actors struggling
Highlighting 2024 research that found 35% of BAFTA-nominated actors had been privately educated – five times the percentage of public-school pupils in the general population – she told the Independent: "Working-class actors are struggling for work because there isn't enough work.
"There's not enough stories that are being told about working-class people where you can hire working-class people."
Adding that having a disproportionately high percentage of actors from wealthier backgrounds does a disservice to audiences as well as performers, she explained: "What I want is equality. It's about fairness of opportunity... the audience is suffering because they're missing out on the next Daniel Day-Lewis. The next Julie Walters."
McClure and Owen, who was an actor in shows like Shameless, Murphy's Law and My Family before becoming a director, spent time in Norway this summer, enjoying the sights of Isbreen in northern Norway. During their stay at a luxury igloo retreat where the Northern Lights can be seen on as many as 200 nights per year, she got a chance to reflect on what's important in her own life.
"Yes, it's luxury, but it's luxury in a completely different sense of the word," she told podcaster Jonny Cooper. "You know, the fact that you can eat your dinner in your joggers and that's exactly how you should be eating your dinner.
"You don't dress up at night. ...here, it's all about comfort. It's all about being yourself and feeling relaxed. And that to me is pure luxury."
Catch Vicky and Jonny on Saturday Kitchen from 10am to 11.30am on BBC One.
