Sally Phillips, known for playing Shazzer in the Bridget Jones films, has opened up about how her own relationship difficulties helped her create the beloved character. The 56-year-old actress, who also starred in Smack the Pony, split from her husband Andrew Bermejo in 2017 after 14 years of marriage.
Drawing from Personal Experience
Speaking about her marriage breakdown, Phillips said: "So my marriage failed. There were many reasons it failed. But one of the reasons, I think, was that I was absolutely not prepared. I wouldn't talk about the possibility of it ending, so we could never actually talk about what was wrong. I would just shut down the conversation."
She added: "I made him feel awful just by being me, and he made me feel awful just by being him. To continue in that was not successful." Despite the split, Phillips continues to co-parent their three children: Luke, 17, Tom, 14, and Olly, who is in his early 20s and has Down syndrome and autism.
Life After Divorce
Phillips, who is now dating former British Army captain Ian Pilcher after a blind date set up by a friend, reflected on her fears about single parenthood: "I was so frightened of the marriage ending and me being on my own with one, two, three children. And I was so sure that I couldn't manage that. Turns out I can. So, I think I would say that divorce isn't always failure."
An outspoken advocate for neurodivergent and disabled communities, Phillips went public in 2024 when Olly was excluded from a London trampoline park and told he needed a letter from his GP to take part. She describes Olly as "hilarious, joyous and hilarious."
New BBC Comedy
Phillips is now starring in a new BBC1 comedy, The Hairdresser Mysteries, which premiered on Friday. She plays Lily Petal, a modern-day hairdresser and 1970s enthusiast who leaves a smart London salon for a small shop in a sleepy northern market town. Her tranquil life is disrupted when murders start happening on her doorstep, turning her into an amateur sleuth.
Comparing the show's appeal to The Vicar of Dibley, Phillips said: "The show is written by Jim Cartwright. There's a poetry to his writing. One line I said was 'I gave a mammoth's trim to a hairy old shaman type!'"
Comedy Career and Audition Memories
While fans see Phillips as a natural comic, she admits being funny hasn't always been easy. "When I started out I hoped to be, you know, Judi Dench at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And I'm not that," she said. Nevertheless, she has become one of the funniest people on TV, with fans following her journey through 25 years as Bridget Jones's best mate Shazzer.
One of her funniest memories comes from her audition for the first Bridget Jones film. "It was my 30th birthday on the day of the read-through for the first film," she recalled. "When I walked in I just thought 'my career is just going to get better from here'. I then looked over and I was the only person in Britain who hadn't seen Pride and Prejudice. But when I saw Colin Firth I thought, 'he's mine. I am in the right room.'"
Phillips initially auditioned for the role of Bridget but was instead cast as Shazzer. She remembered director Sharon Maguire asking: "'The character needs to be drunk quite a lot. How do you think you'd do that?' I said 'I don't know, I might get drunk'. Which was the wrong answer."
Despite enjoying the role, Phillips has some regrets: "She doesn't get to snog Colin, Hugh or Patrick Dempsey. Consequently, my character spends 25 years saying, 'f***!' Colin and I are ships that have passed in the night."
Discovering Comedy
Phillips discovered her talent for comedy after moving around as a child due to her father's job as a British Airways executive. "Whenever I came back to the UK, everything was wrong," she said. This made her feel she never fitted in and became accidentally quirky. She left Oxford University with a first class degree in Italian and linguistics before pursuing acting after a spell at clown school.
"I did ballet when I was a kid and loved it, but I got told to give up because I was too fat," she recalled. "But when I discovered clown school it changed everything. The thing about it is that if you're someone who feels like you get things wrong in your life, at clown school, getting things wrong is getting things right."
Clown school also helped her shed the 'pound shop Barbie' image she had of herself. "When I started out, I thought I was a serious actress," she said. "I've wanted to be Barbie, but I'm kind of, you know, a 'pound shop Barbie'. The minute I started doing comedy, I got an agent, I started getting jobs."
Now firmly established as one of Britain's great funny women, Phillips admits to being just fine with her career: "I'm so lucky. Comedy is such a great life. It's actually been really brilliant. Yes I did hope to be Judi Dench, but I've had more fun."
