Strictly Come Dancing star Alex Kingston has revealed the emotional devastation she suffered following her ex-husband Ralph Fiennes' affair. The 62-year-old actress, best known for playing River Song in Doctor Who, admitted she felt 'worthless' after the Oscar-nominated actor left her for a woman 18 years his senior.
Kingston and Fiennes met at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1983 and married a decade later. However, their relationship crumbled when Fiennes began an affair with Francesca Annis, his co-star in a production of Hamlet. At the time, Fiennes was 32 and Annis was 50. Kingston said: 'We were like strangers – very fragile. His mother was dying and somehow we thought the wedding was going to heal everything. But that was crazy, of course.'
Reflecting on the divorce, Kingston told the Daily Mail: 'I was feeling worthless, that I would never find anyone else as good as my husband, which is ridiculous, but I had so little self-esteem.' She added that she does not regret the experience, saying: 'Divorce is awful but it is also something I don't regret happening to me because it has shaped who I am now.'
Kingston later married German author Florian Haertel, with whom she has a daughter, but they divorced in 2013. She is now happily married to TV host Jonathan Stamp, whom she wed in Italy in 2015. The actress is set to appear on the upcoming series of Strictly Come Dancing, fulfilling a long-held ambition.
